Take The Long Way Home
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 11th story in Ramble On series. S7. Dean is running on empty. Sam's hallucinations, the bad feelings between them, a not-quite-healed broken leg, his beloved Impala locked down and black-blooded monsters in every direction, all of it has taken its toll. Ellie's been gone for two months and when she turns up, his attempt to be totally honest with her backfires. No slash.
1. Chapter 1 Gone Too Long

**Chapter 1 Gone Too Long**

* * *

_It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell._

~ Buddha

* * *

_**Carrs Mill, Pennsylvania. September, 2012.**_

On the river's broad and sluggishly moving surface, the colours of the sky were reflected, pinks and golds, indigo and lavender, the shapes of the lit edges of cloud disturbed and distorted by the ripples on the water.

Dean stared through the window at the scene, hardly noticing it, his thoughts following the same track they'd been on for the last week.

"Hi, there, you're back."

He blinked and looked around, seeing the woman standing beside his table. "Uh, yeah, why not? Best food in town, right?"

"Right!" she agreed, her smile bright. "What can I get you tonight?"

"What d'you recommend?"

"Carol's doing jalapeno and cheese steak tonight," the waitress told him, glancing over her shoulder at the specials board. "Or there's a sweet chilli chicken, grilled with –"

"Steak's fine," he said. "Uh, medium –"

"Rare," she finished for him, smiling again. "I remember. You want a beer?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Be right back," she promised, writing up the order and turning away.

He'd been here for three days, not sure of what he was doing. Sam wasn't answering his phone, no surprise there, but it'd still stung. Ellie's phone was going to voicemail and so was Bobby's, a message on the old man's service on his other-other-line advising he'd be down in Mexico for a few days. He'd been looking through the papers, on the internet, half-heartedly, looking for any kind of job that would take his mind off the looping track it'd been on since Sam had told him to get lost.

At the time, he'd been sure he was doing the right thing. It wasn't until the kid had come into the room as he'd let the kitsune down on the bed that he'd really felt a doubt about it. Then he'd wondered if there really had been a difference between Amy and himself. He'd killed for his family. Without hesitation or thought. And those thoughts had screwed him over.

"Here you go."

He looked up to see the waitress back, a cold beer and a frosted glass being set down on the table. "Thanks."

"Not a problem." She hesitated by the edge of the table. "You going to be here for a little while?"

"A couple of days, I guess," he said, giving a one-shoulder shrug. He couldn't seem to find the enthusiasm to leave. Or even think about leaving. "Kind of taking a break from the road."

"What do you do?"

He repressed the snort that rose in his throat. "Uh, sort of freelance pest control," he told her, smiling at the involuntary face she made. "It's not that bad. I, uh, travel a lot. Tell people how to fix their, uh, pest problems."

"I'm almost sorry I don't have any," she said, smiling down at him. "I'm Kelly."

"Yeah, I – uh, Dean," he responded, looking down at his beer.

"Nice to meet you, Dean," Kelly said. "Food won't be long."

He nodded and watched her walk away, pulling out his phone again. The phone rang then cut over to voicemail again, and he frowned, catching it in the reflection from the window as the interior lights of the restaurant took over from the dying light outside. Where the hell was everyone?

* * *

"How'd you get into something like pest control anyway?" Kelly asked him.

She'd gotten off her shift at nine and had walked over, bringing two beers and asking if she could join him. He hadn't been able to think of a reason to say no. The idea of going back to his room to sit in front of the laptop screen and stare at it for the next couple of hours had made the choice a no-brainer.

"Long story," he said, smiling to take the edge from the brush off. "Kind of a family business."

Not a lie and not the truth, he thought, picking up his beer and swallowing a mouthful, his gaze sliding to his watch. Half-past ten. He should call it a night.

"You look like you've been doing some heavy-duty thinking," she said, making it not quite a question as she picked up her own bottle. "Problems?"

"Too many to keep count of," he agreed lightly.

"You know," she said, leaning on the table, and looking at him. "I've been told I'm not a bad listener."

He looked away, mouth curving up at one side. "Not really those kind of problems," he said, putting the empty bottle on the table and pulling out his wallet. "Thanks for the drinks and the company, but I gotta go."

He watched her lean back in the booth from the corner of his eye, relieved at her easy shrug.

"Anytime," she said, lifting her gaze as he got to his feet. "Tomorrow's special is grain-fed eye fillet."

He nodded. "Then I'll see you tomorrow."

Walking through the half-filled restaurant, he wondered again what the hell he was doing. The Duster sat outside, its faded blue paint failing to hide the aggressive lines of the car and he got into it, starting the engine and turning out of the lot.

It'd been two months since Ellie had left Sioux Falls. Two months of nothing but crap, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. Until four weeks ago, she'd been calling, first from Egypt, then from Italy, and then London. The Watcher had told her about Leviathan, some of it, anyway, mostly too late to be of any use to them since the big-mouths had found Bobby's place a lot more quickly than they'd thought. Time inside of the angel, Ellie'd suggested when she gotten through. Probably, he'd thought. They'd gone off the grid when they'd been duplicated and he had no idea if she would even be able to find them now.

His leg twinged as he changed down to pull into the motel's parking lot, and he tried to ignore it. He hadn't given it enough time in the cast, but Sam's problems had outweighed his own. Stopping the car in front of his room, he got out and locked it, and forced himself to walk evenly to the door.

Their names and faces had been all over the news for the last few weeks and sooner or later, someone was going to recognise him from those broadcasts. He'd been lucky so far, but he'd kept moving. It was stupid to stay in one small town and wait for that recognition to find him. He couldn't make himself care.

Inside the room, he dropped his keys and phone on the nightstand, and pulled off his coat, leaving it on the back of a chair. He walked to the kitchen and got a glass from the sink. The bottle was nearly three-quarters full and he poured himself a half glass, carrying it back to the small table.

The laptop sat there, mutely accusing. He pushed it to the other side of the table and stared at the wall opposite. Even if Amy had been able to control herself, she'd still taken lives, he thought, brows drawn together as he went over the situation again. Sam hadn't wanted to listen. His brother hadn't even given him the opportunity to hear his side. He picked up the glass and swallowed a mouthful, relishing the smooth descent and the warming fire it left in his stomach.

Sam hadn't wanted to listen … and he'd been too impatient with his brother to take the time to convince him, he admitted, looking down into the glass. The hallucinations had scared him. Not because of what Sam'd been seeing but because there were no reasons for him to be seeing anything. Bobby'd told him it'd take time. They didn't have time. They never had enough fucking time to get themselves clear on what was happening and what to do next.

He looked across the room to the canvas bag, sitting at the foot of the bed. He'd grabbed a half dozen or so psychological texts in the last town. None of them had given him anything useful on what Sam'd described had been happening to him. Ellie had seen it, before any of them, but he couldn't get hold of her and he'd been changing his numbers so often, he was more and more sure she wouldn't be able to find him.

_I keep my marbles in a friggin' lead box_, he'd told Bobby, the scowl deepening as he realised that'd been only partly true. He needed someone to talk to. Needed someone to listen to him. It couldn't be Bobby and it sure as hell couldn't be Sam. They both had more than enough problems of their own, and for all Bobby's gruffly given advice, the older hunter wouldn't push at him if he stonewalled. Only she did that.

Maybe he should've trusted Sam on the kitsune. Maybe he should've had it out with him when he'd done it. Maybe he'd been wrong to try and keep it a secret – another secret, part of the growing mountain of mistrust between them – and he should've been able to trust in his brother. Maybe the levis would drown in their own evil and make hunting them down unnecessary, he thought sourly, rubbing a hand over his jaw. He was going around in circles with the same thoughts, the same guilt and pain, over and over again.

And for all he knew, the one person he wanted to see, his hand tightening around the glass as he took another couple of gulps, could be dead or missing or lying half-eaten in a ditch somewhere. Like all the other times before, there was no way of knowing and no way of finding out.

* * *

_**West Plains, Missouri**_

Ellie backed up, keeping herself in view of the side mirrors on the truck as it reversed toward her. When the end of the chute was over the hole, she held up her hand and the driver stopped, getting out of the cab and walking to the rear of the truck. She adjusted the angle of the chute over the shallow grave and the mixer released its load.

That was two of them who'd find it hard to get themselves together again, she thought as the wet cement filled the hole and started to creep over the edges. Morrison stopped the flow and tipped the chute up, securing it for the drive.

"Well, you can tell Singer the boron works a treat," he said, walking to stand beside her.

Nodding, Ellie looked at him. "You'll let everyone know, Paddy?"

"Got the bags ready to mix up and put into spray packs," the Irish hunter told her, scratching at the ruff of white beard that fringed his jawline. "Once they're down, decapitation, dismemberment and a few concrete-filled holes – or," he said with a wink. "A steel mill, if one's handy."

"Not exactly elegant, is it?"

He laughed, eyes crinkling up. "Not looking for elegant in this line of work, Ellie. It works, an' that, by god, is good enough."

"The other thing is communications," she said, turning to follow him back to the cab of the truck. "If they are tracking cells through the networks, they'll be able to find a lot of hunters that way, even if they're wading through a ton of conversations. A few key words would filter out most of the civilian stuff."

Marcus and Twist had told her about the cell phones. Both had had near miss run-ins with the monsters after contacting others, and one of those contacted had gone missing a short time after the calls. Phone security hadn't been much of a priority for most of the hunters. It was a whole new ballgame now. She'd kept her phone turned off for the last four weeks, not sure if Dean would leave a message – or know about the need for discretion. After trying his old numbers and hearing the disconnect messages, she figured they'd found that out.

"I'll let everyone know to either ditch their phones or keep the lines free of hunter chatter," Paddy promised, swinging up into the cab. "You sure you're gonna be alright on your own?"

"I'll be careful," she told him. "It'll take me a while to figure out where Bobby's gone to ground anyway."

"Give him my regards when you do find him," the hunter said, starting up the truck. "Tell him he still owes me sixty bucks for that poker game in '85!"

Backing away, she waved and turned away, walking slowly across the cracked and pitted tarmac to her truck.

Bobby'd disappeared but when she'd swung by his place, she could see why. The house had been a pile of rubble and the yard looked worse. She thought they'd gotten themselves off the grid and out of sight after she'd seen the news reports. It wasn't going to be easy finding them.

She got into the truck and started the engine, pulling her phone out of her pocket and looking at it. Two more missed calls that hadn't left a message. Dean, she wondered? She needed to get somewhere she could check with Franklin about tracing them. The calls had originated from somewhere and that would, at least, give her someplace to start.

As she pulled out of the vacant lot, she thought about the last two months. Penemue had confirmed the slaughter in Heaven. There were no leaders left and Castiel had disappeared when the leviathan had begun to show up. There was only one conclusion to draw from that, and she bit her lip, wondering how Dean had taken the loss of another friend.

She'd been gone too long, she knew. A week, maybe two, she'd told him. At first, it'd seemed like the leviathans had been confined to the US. It'd only taken a few weeks for the first couple to turn up in Italy and France. Organisms that could copy anyone were going to be a major pain in the ass to keep track of.

The Church's library in Rome had information on the creatures. An experiment gone wrong, that much had been clear. Locked away in the timeless plane of Purgatory. There had been three references she'd found interesting enough to follow up. When created, there had been only one of each of the first creatures. Leviathan, created to populate the seas. And Behemoth, to fill the land masses. Behemoth had apparently been less voracious and had died out well before the dinosaurs had made their appearance. Leviathan had had an advantage. A self-contained breeding cycle that'd resulted in a population boom and some genetic mutation, possibly caused by the irradiation of the planet millions of years before, that had allowed the creature to move from the seas to the land.

A little further biological research had returned the possibility that the black-blooded monsters were limited, single-intelligence animals. Clones, she thought, frowning at the road, in other words. How that was going to help in the immediate situation, she wasn't sure. Not yet. But if they were a multi-cellular organism with a single original 'mind', it might be a key to being able to destroy them. If they could find the original, she reminded herself.

* * *

_**Olney, Illinois**_

The old man's grumblings were a constant mutter in her ear as the lock yielded on the exchange's office door and she slipped inside. It was one of the smaller offices, primarily automated but with a few tech stations for line access and maintenance and no one would be there until the morning. She hoped it would have the necessary equipment to do the traces she needed, if she could get Franklin to stop complaining long enough to take her through it.

"I'm in," she said, her voice very low, the mike against her throat picking up the words.

"Right," Franklin stopped his griping and she heard a soft rustle of paper from his end. "Find a terminal."

Sitting down at one of the operator terminals, Ellie brought up a query screen. "Go."

"You need to run ANI to get the number and then a diagnostics on the location towers it last used."

"Okay." Ellie looked at the list of options. "Can I ping the phone to get a more recent location?"

"Maybe," Franklin said. "See what comes back on the ANI."

It took fifteen seconds to the get the number and another fourteen minutes to route through the last used towers and get a region. The phone was either off or had been ditched when she tried to send a signal through and she started the process again, with the second of the calls reported on her cell, picking up the number from the time stamp.

"What the –?"

"What's the number returned?"

"0414 555 6798," Ellie told him, staring impatiently at the screen, a crease between her brows. "The region is, um, Kalispell."

"Gimme twenty-five minutes," Franklin said enigmatically.

"Dammit, Frank – wait," Ellie said, her voice rising slightly. "I got another hit on a third number, this one's in Ohio."

"Location?"

"Canton."

"You think that's one of the Winchesters?" he asked her.

"Why wouldn't they be together?" she countered, mostly to herself.

"Why're you askin' me?"

"Never mind," she said. "I'm getting out of here, can you send whatever you find on the Montana location to me via the forum network?"

"Yep."

The line dropped and she shut down the terminal, pulling the headset from her ears and neck and pushing them into her pocket. Canton and, or, possibly Montana. She was closer to Canton.

* * *

_**Seymour, Indiana.**_

Ellie took the exit when she saw the diner, her stomach rumbling. Pulling into a space out the front, she parked the truck and headed inside, ordering at the counter and helping herself to a booth at the back, where she'd have a view of the front door and the service door for staff. She gulped the black coffee the waitress brought and dragged her cell from her pocket, inserting the new sim as the first refill arrived.

Looking down at the phone, she dialled the third number, hearing it ring.

"Yeah?"

"Sam?" Ellie breathed a sigh of relief. "It's Ellie."

"What the – where are you?" he asked, a loud exhale gusting into her ear. "Dean's been – are you alright?"

"Yeah, fine," she reassured him. "What about you – I've been trying the old numbers but guessing you've had to ditch them?"

"Yeah, prepaid throwaways now," Sam said. "Look, Ellie, it's complicated – you know where I am?"

"Think so," Ellie said. "Where's Dean?"

"I'll tell you when you get here," he said. "Airwaves aren't so secure these days for us."

"Heard that." She looked at her watch. "I'm about three or four hours away. There's a troll's relative's place just off the main throughway that's good for talking."

There was a moment's silence on the line as he digested that. "Uh, yeah, okay."

"See you there."

* * *

_**Canton, Ohio**_

"You know what he did?" Sam waved his glass around, its contents splashing up perilously close to the rim. "He went and killed her. After I'd told him that I let her go. And then he lied to me."

Ellie nodded sympathetically. It wasn't the first time she'd seen Sam drunk, but it was the first time she'd seen him loud, and this angry with his brother.

Ogre's Bar and Grill was about half full of customers, watching a football game replay on the big screen to one side of the room, or leaning up against the counter, having a last one for the road. A few looked around at Sam's outburst, but most continued to mind their own business, the antics of a stranger of no particular interest.

He looked around, blinking rapidly as he noticed they weren't alone, then down at her, slouching back his chair.

"He doesn't trust me to make a simple decision, Ellie." He shook his head.

"Sam, how have you been controlling the hallucinations?"

He held up his hand. A thick and twisted scar crossed the palm. "Dean – he told me to press on it. Told me it was real. It would make anything not real go away."

"And it works?" she said. "You're still getting a bit of pain from it?"

"It's getting less, but yeah, it's still working." He looked down at it. "It's just the memories, isn't it? Coming back?"

"I don't know," Ellie admitted. From Sam's descriptions, it sounded more complex than that. And looking at him, she thought he'd integrated the three disparate parts of his personality well enough that there shouldn't have been any mismatched edges. "Are you dreaming a lot?"

"No," Sam said, frowning. "Hardly at all – not that I remember."

She could see that he was thinking about that. Psychosis, in most forms, came out first through the subconscious, then crept through the consciousness. He might not be remembering his dreams, she told herself.

"When the hallucinations come, what do you see?" she asked.

"Uh, Lucifer, somewhere close," he told her reluctantly. "Sometimes, flames, you know. Hell. The last few times he told me it was all a dream, I hadn't gotten out at all."

"That's been the gist of most of them? Trying to convince you that you're still in the cage?"

He nodded. "He told me the only way I'd get free was if I killed myself."

"What?" Ellie leaned across the table. "Was that a push, Sam? Did it feel like someone was trying to get you to do it?"

"It was blatant," he said. "He said he'd keep the illusions going until I couldn't take it anymore."

He turned his head, looking at the bar. "The next set, I thought it was Dean, you know? He needed backup and Bobby'd gone to help out Sheriff Mills and I just – I don't know. I thought it was my brother."

Ellie looked at the expressions flashing over Sam's face as he ducked his head.

"Sam, this does not sound like the usual round of malfunctions caused by trauma," she said softly.

"Yeah, I been reading through everything I can find on severe trauma, personality displacement, memory shock …" He shook his head. "Everything. Nothing sounds like this stuff, but …"

"But what?"

"The last time Dean and Bobby tried to dry me out," he said slowly, eyes narrowing with the memories. "In the panic room, I had hallucinations a bit like this. Other people, you know, telling me things."

"Telling you what?"

His brow wrinkled up. "I thought – at the time – I thought it was different perspectives on what I'd done, sort of pro and con stuff."

"That doesn't sound like this – did those people push you to do something?"

"Uh, my mom –" he hesitated, eyes closing. "She told me I was the strong one, I had to stop it."

Ellie bit her lip and looked at Sam and after a moment, he raised his gaze to meet hers. "That was just me, wasn't it?"

"I think so," she said. "The hallucinations you're seeing – and hearing – and feeling – from Lucifer … have you ever felt like those were your thoughts? Maybe twisted around or disguised, but still something you've considered?"

"No." He leaned back in his chair, his face drawn. "No, never."

"Does anyone know what happened in the cage when Death got your soul back?" she asked him.

He shook his head again. "No one said anything. Cas – Cas admitted he screwed it up when he tried to get me out, but we haven't – well, you know he died when the levis got out?"

She nodded. "Penemue told me they couldn't feel him after that."

"You don't think these are hallucinations? What I'm seeing?"

"They're hallucinations, alright," she said. "The question is are they from the trauma of the reintegration or … are they, maybe, from something else."

"What else could they be?"

"I need – there are some things I need to check on, Sam," she hedged, looking down at the table. "People who know more about this than I do. In the meantime, you need to find a way to shut it out –"

"Ellie, so long as I have something to tie me to reality, I can get rid of him," Sam said, leaning forward slightly. "I'm okay, you know. I mean, not okay, but I'm functioning. I can handle myself. But Dean, he –"

She looked at him, recognising the change of topic and letting it go. "Sam, she killed three people – you said it."

He ducked his head. "We've killed people to save family," he said. "More than three. She was desperate. She promised it wouldn't happen again."

"I know," she agreed. "And maybe it wouldn't. Or maybe it would. You know Dean would've felt any other deaths on him, because he'd a chance to do something."

"He agreed with me to let Lenore go," he argued, running a hand through his hair as he lifted his gaze.

"Didn't you say Lenore hadn't killed anyone? Had been living on animals for the whole time?"

"She killed when Eve started messing with her mind." Sam looked away.

"And Cas killed her." She let out a small sigh. "You're not pissed at your brother because of what he did to the kitsune, Sam."

He was silent for a moment, staring at the floor, then he looked up. "No."

"What else happened?"

He snorted. "God, what didn't?" He picked up his glass and tossed the last mouthful down. "I don't know what's going on with him – maybe it was just keeping the secret – I don't know, but he's – he's been all over the place. He's drinking hard again, going off on his own … "

She listened as he told her about the Egyptian god and the witches, his narrative wandering around the points, tangled up with his feelings and doubts.

"I know," Sam said slowly, his hands playing with a coaster on the table. "I know he can't just find that trust again. I knew it was gonna take time, but this …"

"He's scared to death for you, Sam," she reminded him gently. "That might not be what you want to hear, but that's what's behind everything he does."

"I can take care of myself!"

"I know that," she said. "But let's get real for a minute here," she continued, holding his gaze with her own. "You think disappearing and trying to take care of Amy on your own, without telling him, without letting him see you're rational about it, is the way to convince him of that?"

"I was trying not to worry him –"

He stopped as he caught her expression. "Alright, I didn't think he'd let her go, if we found her."

"Right," she said. "And what does that say to your brother?"

He scowled at her and looked away.

"All I'm saying here is that if you want to get free of the patterns you two have been stuck in, one of you is going to have to change how you do things," she told him.

"He doesn't listen to me," Sam argued, half-heartedly, Ellie thought.

"He does, and he always has, provided you tell him the truth, straight out, and don't automatically assume he'll jump the other way."

She thought he wasn't going to listen to that, but he nodded slowly. "Maybe," he allowed. "But I – I need to be on my own for a while anyway."

His brow furrowed as he looked back at her. "Where have you been, anyway? He's been freaking out the last four weeks."

"Long story. I was at Heathrow when one of the levis turned up in Paris and killed two hunters," she said, with a shrug. "By the time I got back to the States, there were reports everywhere. We were looking at the periodic table for correlating elements that might have an effect and just starting using everything we could get our hands on, turned out that boron was the stopper."

"Bobby found that out too, but not until just a couple of weeks ago."

"Yeah, I got a message from Marcus from him," she told him. "In any case, the last three weeks, I've been in Missouri, dodging them, and you guys had changed your numbers, took me a while to figure out how to trace you."

"Frank – Devereaux – you know him?" Sam asked.

Ellie nodded. She'd met the man a few years ago. Frank was a contact of Bobby's and he'd told her a bit about the man and his past. "Yeah, worked with him once."

"He's a friend of Bobby's, you know? He, uh, got us off the grid. We've been changing phones ever since. Most paranoid guy you've ever seen."

She shrugged. "Well, sometimes they're really out to get you."

"Dean –" Sam stopped, making a vague gesture as he looked away. "I think – he took Cas' death hard, you know. And something happened to him, with that god, Osiris. I – we didn't – he wouldn't talk about it, but he hasn't been the same lately."

She rubbed her eyes and sighed. "I knew this was going to be hard to work out."

Sam looked at her. "Don't get me wrong, Ellie, I'm not making excuses for what I did, but at least some of what's going on for him is because you haven't been around. He's – it's like he just loses something, you know?"

"Do you know where he is, Sam?"

"He left a message yesterday. Said he was in Carrs Mill, PA."

Staring down at the table top, he rubbed his knuckles over his forehead. "I can't talk to him, Ellie. I …" He shook his head helplessly. "I need time on my own."

"Sam, take care of yourself first." She looked at the empty glass. "Don't try and blunt the edges like Dean does."

"Yeah," he agreed with a soft sigh. "You have to make him listen, Ellie. Make him talk. He's a pressure cooker on high heat, and he doesn't know it, he won't look at it."

She nodded as she stood and picked up her coat from the back of the chair. Pulling it on, she retrieved her backpack from the floor. "I'll see you later, Sam. Stay in touch."

"Yeah. You too."

* * *

_**I-80E, Ohio**_

Another rain storm passed over and Ellie watched the road absently, through the back-and-forth flick of the wipers, her thoughts circling around what Sam had told her about his brother. Too many things had happened to them. Too many bad things.

She'd thought Dean's trust in the angel had been undermined in Chicago. Maybe it had been, but fighting together to stop Lucifer from rising, and putting the devil back in his cage had smoothed a lot of that over. Cas betraying him, first with the deal with Crowley, and then by forcibly trying to stop him by breaking Sam's mind had been a blow he hadn't recovered from, even when she'd seen him last. She didn't think he'd had the time to get any of it straight before losing the angel completely.

_The cellular structure of the cloned parts to the whole organism is such that each clone knows what all others know_. Speculation, that was all, she thought. The fragments from the Vatican texts had suggested it and the biological data had come from research into the largest known living organism on the planet – a grove of aspens in the US – each individual tree rising from a common root system, an identical clone to the first tree and to all the others. Expanding that data to an intelligent organism was a reach, she knew. But it could be an explanation for the knowledge they had, for their abilities, even, to copy a person exactly.

Each levi knew what the others knew. And they'd known Cas, had been a part of the angel, while he'd carried them around from Purgatory. They'd known Bobby's place, known the hunter and the Winchesters and their relationship to each other. Known other hunters as well. She remembered the expression on the face of the one she'd faced in Missouri, a flash of familiarity as it'd looked at her, before Paddy had taken its head off from behind with an old Japanese sword. It'd known her. Not very well, because Cas hadn't known her very well. Just well enough to recognise her.

It would make it all a lot harder, she thought. Harder to fight them. Harder to stay in touch with the others.

With difficulty, she pushed the thoughts of the levis aside, and tried to focus her attention on what Sam'd said about the hallucinations. There were a lot of reasons for the brain to produce hallucinations. Self-defence, chemical imbalances, damaged connections … too many possibilities and not enough solid fact. Sam had said that the hallucinations had begun after they gotten back from trying to return the souls in Cas to Purgatory. He'd told her that he'd attempted the reintegration before following Dean and Bobby. The soulless hunter, efficient, indifferent to life or death, including his own; the shredded and rent scapegoat, who'd borne the torture of the angels and the memories of his time in Hell; and the part of himself, Sam had thought, that was closest to who he really was … the core of his soul, perhaps, she thought. As in all things subconscious, the process had been largely symbolic, laid out in terms he'd understood and had known instinctively. He'd killed the other two, he'd said, to achieve the rejoining.

Psychic trauma might've pushed him to recall Lucifer. Some kind of atonement or punishment for what he'd done, or what he'd thought he'd done to himself. That the hallucinations had taken the form of the devil attempting to convince him that he was dreaming, that it was all an illusion and he was still down in the cage … she wasn't sure about that. A denial mechanism was possible. That it was a hallucination, that Dean's suggested use of pain as a dispersing tool had worked, wasn't in doubt. Sam had told her that the hallucinations had come on at any time, there'd been no obvious triggers to them.

It would, she considered, be all too easy to put this down to a purely physical or psychological problem. They lived in a world that had answers that most people would never have thought of, too far from the reach of science or technology, but which were just as real and just as dangerous. In her apartment, she had books that had touched on the aspects of possession that were very rare. She thought she needed to go and look at them again.

_He's drinking hard again._

Not surprising but not welcomed news either, she thought. He would dull down the edges as much as he could. Do whatever he could to bury or ignore the pain or fear. They'd talked around it a little, but she hadn't been able to offer him a different short-term solution and he'd told her he had to get out of his head somehow.

He'd gone through a lot in the year he'd spent with the Braedens. But it hadn't been enough, not on his own and not in that situation where he'd been struggling with people who hadn't known him well enough to give him a lead. He'd done a lot of growing up, he'd said. He still didn't really understand that it was the way he saw himself that was the problem. Guilt and responsibility that weren't his to bear.

Pulling in a deep breath, she wondered how mad he was going to be when he saw her.

* * *

_**Carrs Mill, Pennsylvania**_

The streets were bathed in the ghostly lavender light of dusk as she drove slowly into Carrs Mill. The small town's only motel was at the eastern end, set back from the road. She pulled in and parked in the visitor's parking slot, turning off the engine and listening for a moment to the tick of the hot metal cooling.

Sighing, she reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed her bag, opening the driver's door and sliding out. She scanned the row of parked cars in front of the rooms. Sam had told her that the Impala was hidden away now, some anonymous storage place. He'd described the little hatchback he'd last seen Dean driving, but she was pretty sure he wouldn't be driving it anymore.

There. At the far end of the row, the light blue '72 Plymouth Duster stood out from the modern SUVs and compacts like an old racehorse in a field of show ponies. She walked along the row, and smiled suddenly as she got near enough to see which state the plates were from.

Walking up to the corresponding room door, the smile disappeared. She knocked twice, then once, then once again.

The door opened slowly. Dean looked at her, his face twisting into an expression she couldn't define. He looked tired, she thought. He opened the door wider, standing back and she stepped through.

"You know," he said, his tone light and conversational as he closed the door behind her. "I'm pretty sure you said it was just going to be a week – maybe two."

"I don't work for Amtrak, Dean. The schedule gets messed up sometimes. You know that."

"And your phone was off," he said levelly. "You know how I know that? 'Cause I tried it, about a thousand times."

She looked at him. "Yeah, it was. When one of the levis made me in Paris, I figured it was safer if I wasn't broadcasting my location around the globe."

She turned away from him, walking to the sofa to dump her bag. "You got some borax, holy water, salt and silver handy?"

He nodded, gesturing to the duffel at the foot of the bed. She walked over and unzipped it, pulling out the two flasks, small bag and slim, silver knife that lay on the top. Handing them to him, she watched as he handled them and poured small amounts over her held-out arm, his face closed up and expressionless.

The room showed a couple of days of constant occupancy, the kitchen bench covered with the debris from several take out places, the bed rumpled, a half dozen empty beer bottles on the low table in front of the table, two empty whiskey bottles sitting in the sink. Walking to the sink, she pulled the two bottles out and dumped them in the trash can, turning back to the sink to wash the borax and salt from her arm.

"Do we have to go through this every time?" She turned back to him. "Why is it so easy for you to think I haven't been frantically trying to get back since I left?"

She watched his expression change, his shoulders slumping as he leaned back against the door. His hunted expression and the apathy in his posture knifed into her heart.

"I'm sorry." She walked over to him slowly. "I tried to figure out a way to get back in contact but there wasn't enough time." Gesturing vaguely, she added, "Once you guys started changing phones, I couldn't trace you anyway."

She reached up, her arms sliding around his neck, pressing herself against him. His arms encircled her and she felt the faint shudder pass through his frame as he pulled her close, his breath warm against the side of her neck.

"What happened this time, Ellie?" he said quietly next to her ear, all the fight gone from his voice.

"About the same as what's been happening here, by the sounds of it," she said. "Not the same level of urgency. There was a levi in Paris, and one arrived in Italy, then I came home and there were a lot more here." She pressed her cheek to his, feeling his stubble rasp along her skin.

"Yeah." He straightened, rubbing his hand along his cheek and jaw, looking at the faint redness along her cheek. "Sorry. I haven't been too worried about personal appearance lately."

She shook her head dismissively. "That doesn't matter."

Looking around the room, she asked, "Have you eaten?"

"No." He thought for a moment. "There's a good place around the corner."

"Let's go. I'm starving." Extracting her wallet, phone and keys from her bag, Ellie put them into her jacket pocket. "We can talk about what's been happening over dinner, okay?"

"Sure," he said, remaining in front of the door until she looked up at him expectantly. "But, uh, gimme a minute."

"What?"

He shook his head, his gaze intent on her face, then he bent his head, and she felt her tension dissolve as his mouth covered hers, the kiss reaching into her and through her, stirring and intoxicating and conversely, giving her a sense of coming home.

* * *

_**AN:** The dates reflect the year Dean spent with Lisa and Ben. This story takes place between S7's Slash Fiction and The Mentalists._


	2. Chapter 2 Not Just Nightmares

**Chapter 2 Not Just Nightmares**

* * *

The good place was actually very good, a riverside bistro-styled restaurant with an astonishing menu, Ellie thought as they were shown to a small booth overlooking the river. The table was lit intimately by a thick candle in a glass vase and a fresh bowl of flowers scented the warm air surrounding the vase.

Dean told her he'd been eating here the last couple of nights and Ellie watched the waitress' face fall as she came up to take their order, looking at her briefly then switching her gaze to Dean as she put a bottle of beer on the table for him.

"Can I get you something?" she asked, pulling out an order pad.

Ellie glanced at the bottle and nodded. "I'll have the same."

Dean's flickered glance at her confirmed that the waitress was indeed disappointed he had other company tonight.

"We'll have the special," he said, gesturing at the board. "Both, uh, medium-rare."

"Anything else, Dean?" the waitress asked, keeping her gaze on him. He shook his head and she turned away, walking stiffly back to the kitchen. Dean's expression was apologetic as he looked back at Ellie. "Uh, I was here a few times … and it was – you know, just talk."

She gave him a shrug. "It happens."

He frowned but let it go at that. "So where were the big-mouths you ran into?"

"Where weren't they?" she said, sitting back as the waitress returned. A bottle of beer and a glass thunked onto the table in front of her and the waitress turned and left without a word. "Nebraska, Iowa, a hunter called me from Missouri."

Picking up the bottle and pouring herself a glass, she continued, "We found a body dump and backtracked the copy to West Plains. When we got there, it recognised me. We'd already figured the boron but Bobby got a message to me through Marcus a week ago. Chopped off the heads, packed the cavity with boron and buried the two parts in different locations. One of them we covered with concrete. The other one was encased in hot steel. I hope it was enough. I didn't see any twitching when we were doing it."

Dean's brows rose. "That sounds … thorough. Uh … we?"

She glanced at him. "Paddy Morrison. You know him? He did a couple of jobs with your dad, he said."

He shook his head. "No." His gaze shifted to the window and despite everything, Ellie could feel her mouth curving into a smile as she read his discomfort.

"He's sixty-three, Dean."

"Oh." He looked back at her, a barely visible shrug lifting one shoulder. "It's – uh – you, uh, get any information about the levis from what you were looking for in Rome?"

"Some," she said. "Maybe a couple of things that might help, sometime, if we can find out more about it."

"Like what?"

"There was a reference to the levis being – maybe – a single organism."

"But – wait – no, they're not, there're like dozens of them," he argued.

"Clones," she said. "Copies of the original. What one knows, they all know."

"That's not helpful."

"Not at the moment, no," she agreed. "But it might be a way to get rid of them, if we could find the original." She looked at him. "Did Cas say anything about them?"

Dean shook his head. "No, he didn't have time."

She stretched out her hand, her fingers curling around his. "I'm so sorry about Cas. I know how much he meant to you."

His eyes closed briefly, his expression hardening. "He made a mistake, he paid for it."

"Don't shut that grief away, along with all the rest, Dean," she warned him in a soft voice.

He opened his eyes, looking into hers. "I don't have time to grieve, Ellie. For anyone."

"Then make time." She leaned forward slightly. "Let it go. It's eating you alive."

He looked up as their food came, forcing a smile for the waitress who fussed slightly over his silverware and water glass.

"That's not the only thing," he said to Ellie when she'd gone.

"I know," she said quietly, picking up her fork. "Sam told me some of what you've been doing. But I want to hear about it from you."

He gave her a rueful smile. "That's going to take time."

"We have some time."

"What'd Sam tell you?" He cut his steak and lifted it. "He tell you about the hallucinations?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Reintegration is always a tricky thing, but he seems to be managing it well. He'll heal. He wants to."

Dean stopped chewing for a moment, looking at her. "Meaning I don't?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

"You know I do."

"What you're saying, and what you're doing are contradictory, Dean. You're drinking again, really drinking. And the nightmares have started again."

"Sam tell you that?" he asked guardedly.

"Yes. Don't look at me like that," she said. "I asked him how you'd been."

He turned back to his food.

"I thought we had a plan, Dean," she pressed. "You ask for help when you need it."

"You had a plan," he said, staring at his plate. "I had friends dying, new, improved monsters coming out of the woodwork, my brother hallucinating that Lucifer was showing up all the time for cosy little chats, and letting monsters go free, a broken leg, the car busted to hell and gone …"

He looked up. "I was just trying to hold it all together, Ellie. I didn't have time to do anything but get my crap swept away and held down as fast I could shovel it."

"Okay, fair enough." She nodded. "But now, you do have the time."

"Do I?" His expression was suddenly vulnerable as he looked at her. "How long can you stay?"

"Long enough. A few days."

"A few days?" Dean shook his head. "This isn't going to work."

"You wanted to try," she reminded him. "I told you it would be hard."

"I know." He looked down at his plate, putting the loaded fork down as if he'd lost his appetite. "I just didn't know it was going to be this hard."

For a moment, as she looked at his face, she felt her pulse accelerate violently. He looked … adrift, she thought. On the verge of giving up completely. It was an expression she'd only seen on him once before. She knew him well, could read him well in so many areas, but not this one. Everything she thought got distorted by how she felt and she knew it was her fears that were doing the distorting.

"You want to throw it in?" she asked, her voice suddenly tight with that fear, that fear that he might want just that.

He looked up at her, eyes widening as he registered what she was asking. "What –? Hell no!"

"Then what?"

He shook his head again. "I don't know! Okay? I – I – everything I've done, everything I tried to do, since you – it went to hell. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing but whatever it is, it's making things worse, not better."

"You're saying that like nothing's worked out," she said. "You're still doing your job, Dean, the witches, the –"

"Those witches – you know how we got through to them?" he asked, his tone abruptly derisive. "Marriage counselling. We didn't get rid of them, just tried to convince them not to take out their anger at each other on the population at large. That's not a win!"

"You stopped the deaths," she contradicted firmly. "That's a win."

"I – Ellie, our faces, our names are fucking everywhere – I been driving some piece of shit car – we don't have the first idea of what do about these goddamned big-mouths –"

"Dean," she interrupted him gently. "Sam's managing his problems. The levis tried to get rid of you but they couldn't and you stopped them. C'mon, if you're going to tally up the score, at least take note of the things that aren't falling apart as well as the things that are."

She gestured at his plate and he looked down reluctantly, picking up his fork and swallowing the mouthful.

"Sam said you had a computer expert?" she asked as she watched him eating. "So, maybe you give him a call and get him to clear your names from the federal databases."

He frowned at her. "Frank's not exactly playing with the full deck."

"Alright," she said. "I'll give a Ray a call. He should be able to do something about it."

"Those reports were broadcast," he argued. "People aren't going to forget about it."

"They might if the databases reflect someone who looks a bit like you but isn't you," she told him, tucking her food to one side of her mouth as she considered the possibilities. "Ray's creative. Let's see what he can do, okay?"

"You gotta plan for the levis?"

"I'm working on it," she said, smiling a little. "Tracking them is going to be hard, at least until they start making a move. Why come after you and Sam so hard?"

"They went after Bobby, but he got out, and when we got there, they were waiting for us," Dean told her. "I dropped a car on one, but it didn't do much. There were more at the hospital but Bobby got us out of there too." He shrugged. "Maybe they didn't like us getting away?"

"Enough to stage a multi-state murder spree just to get you off their backs?" she asked him dubiously. "You weren't hunting them, you ran into them inadvertently."

"I don't know," Dean said. "We're hunting them now."

"That's another issue," she said. "I got a call from a location in Montana, near Kalispell – was that you?"

"Bobby probably," he told her. "Rufus had a hideaway place in Whitefish and we've been there most of the time."

"How's your leg?"

He gave her a crooked smile. "Okay. I didn't give it long enough in the cast."

"Twinges or aches?"

"Twinges, mostly." He looked at her. "Probably be one of things that aches when it rains."

She smiled at that. "Your whole body'll be aching when it rains, you keep this up."

* * *

They walked back to the motel along the riverside path in silence, watching the moon's reflection follow them on the almost still waterway. Dean walked close to Ellie, as close as he could without tripping them both up, his arm around her shoulder, hips almost touching.

He thought about what he'd told her in restaurant. It was true, he just hadn't realised that it was happening, at the time it was. He couldn't think of any way that was going to change, either. In the last couple of hours, he'd gone from not knowing what to do to having a plan, feeling the buoyancy of that in the return of energy and a long-overdue itch to get on with things. Looking down at the woman beside him, he wondered a little bleakly how long it would take for that feeling to disappear again when she left.

He opened the door to his room and held it for her, a faint grin lifting one side of his mouth as he noticed her moving out of the doorway to the right immediately, her hand in the pocket of her jacket. Closing the door and hitting the light switch, the room proved to be empty, but it reassured him to realise that even with him, after a long drive and a meal, she was still a hundred percent alert and ready.

He watched her place her jacket on the chair, pulling out the SIG she carried and putting it matter of factly under the pillow.

When she turned back to him, he smiled. It was a real smile too, he thought, the first in a while.

"What?" She looked sideways at him, hands on her hips.

"Nothing … just ..." He shrugged and walked over to her, letting his fingers slip through her hair, looking down into her upturned face. "I missed you."

"I missed you too," she said softly, linking her hands behind his back. "I like the Duster, though."

He laughed, amazing himself with the feeling. "Yeah, I couldn't resist."

He bent and kissed her, letting his arms curve around her as she leaned into him, deepening their contact and feeling a soft shiver run through him when a gentle moan escaped her, humming against his lips.

It might've been a few minutes or a few hours later, he thought, a little incoherently, when she broke the kiss, stepping back slightly from him. His body was jittering with need and he could see it in her eyes as she looked up at him.

"Twelve hours in the car," she said, her voice husky and low. "I need a shower."

"I'll help," he offered instantly and she shook her head, turning away to grab her backpack and heading for the bathroom.

"I won't be long."

He looked around the room, suddenly noticing the crap strewn everywhere, take out wrappings, beer bottles and dirty clothing over practically every horizontal surface. He could do something about that, he thought.

* * *

The room was clean, the bed made, all the lights off except the nightstand lamp, and he was waiting, a little impatiently, in the queen-sized bed when Ellie came out of the bathroom, one of the small motel towels wrapped around her, her fingers combing through her hair and the strands catching the lamplight in a blaze of colour. His pulse quickened as he watched her walk slowly to the bed, dropping the towel halfway across the room, giving him plenty of time to compare his memories of her with the real thing.

He didn't have the kind of vocabulary to describe what he felt when he looked at her, and he'd've felt like a dick trying to even if he did, he thought. She didn't seem to mind that he couldn't tell her the things most women wanted to hear. He thought maybe she saw it anyway, in his face or his eyes, or felt it in the way he touched her. He couldn't get rid of the faint tremble that filled him when she was very close, when they were skin to skin and the world disappeared and time slowed down or stopped completely. Some of it came from a kind of nervousness, not of her, or of them, but of losing this. It didn't matter how much he tried to logic their situation, he couldn't tell himself it would never happen. It felt too much like throwing out a challenge he never wanted picked up. When she was with him, he felt like he'd do anything, anything at all, to keep it that way.

He rolled onto his elbow as she slid across the sheet beside him, feeling the tensions and worries of the past few weeks dissolve as his lips met hers, arousal thickening, twisting into a spiralling yearning that asked for everything he was or would ever be. It should've scared the crap out of him, that feeling, that longing, but somehow it never did. Just felt like a part of him he'd never known, a part that had been buried sometime in the distant past and not looked at.

He felt her hands, stroking his skin, smoothing over his chest and stomach lazily, the sensations they generated making the muscles flutter and twitch. Rolling onto his back, he pulled her on top of him, letting his hands slide up from her hips, feeling the dip of her waist and corrugations of her ribs. He took his cue from what she was doing, how it was feeling … moving slowly … lingeringly … immersing himself in the feel and smell and taste of her.

When she slipped down his body, her hair trailing over his skin, her mouth following the path of her fingertips, his desire intensified, piercingly powerful, fluxing inward as his heart beat faster and his breath kept getting caught, somewhere between lungs and throat. She was still moving slowly, taking her time, tasting him, lips grazing over him, tongue flicking along the nerve centres, and each caress lit him up in a series of drawn out detonations, the seconds spacing out between them, the feel of her mouth, of her tongue, her fingers, not gentle exactly but stretching his reactions and winding him up in increasing waves of unbearable sensation.

He felt her shift over him, thighs sliding to either side of his hips, and opened his eyes, looking down the length of his body as she rocked her hips over him, heat and a slick softness slipping up and down him. He lifted his hands, and their fingers laced together as she rose a little, taking him in, his back arching involuntarily as she enclosed him in a fiery vice, stretching to accommodate him, squeezing him tightly.

There never would be any words to describe this, a first time over and over again, an acceptance and a connection that was more than body, more than mind, that reached deep and wouldn't let go. The slow roll of her hips and what that felt like, the sight of her … his senses were so close to overload, he couldn't separate one thing from another and all of it fed into that yearning, that tremble that wouldn't stop. All of it stole his blood and his breath and left him armourless and defenceless, not hunter, not Winchester, not brother, nothing but Dean … and sometimes not even that, just the man he thought he might've become before everything else had happened.

He could feel his groans, rumbling in his chest, reverberating in his throat, humming against the inside of his lips. Could feel his arousal, building closer to release, contracting and throbbing through his body, every long stroke and every breath. Could feel hers as well, in the vibrations that passed back and forth between them, her breath hitching into short, harsh gasps, her fingers tightening on his.

He watched her as she arched back, moving faster, the sight inflamed by the feeling of the muscles inside her pulsing against him. His hips jerked as he thrust into her, matching her rhythm, everything compacting, drawing up, tighter and harder and faster when he felt the staccato ripple travelling up him. She stopped moving, the muscles around him clenched and spasmed and he exploded inside her, his back bowing upward, nervous system overwhelmed by the torrent of pleasure that wiped everything else out.

* * *

Dean lay still, hearing Ellie's breathing slip into the steady rhythm of sleep, his arm around her, her head nestled into the hollow of his shoulder. He felt exhausted, physically and mentally and emotionally; his body was satiated, the muscles soft and loose and heavy, but he couldn't sleep, couldn't stop his mind from circling the same problems, the one same problem really, because if he could solve that, then all the others would become manageable.

It was different when she was there. He didn't feel the despair that snuck in through the nights. Didn't feel the futility that what he was doing wasn't making any difference at all. He didn't think it was just a reaction to having someone he could feel close to – physically and mentally. The difference went deeper. To who he was, maybe. Or who he could've been.

_I am normal. I'm just telling the truth for the first time. I mean, why are we even here? 'Cause you're following Dad's orders like a good little solider? Because you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval?_

The memory came without warning, and he sucked in a breath at its power. Ellicott had been inciting Sam, but what his brother had said to him had been Sam's thoughts, his feelings. And they had, to some extent, been true.

He hadn't been desperate for his father's approval, but he'd been desperate to be like him, he thought. Strong. Tough enough to take the knocks the job brought. Able to think under fire as clearly as his father had.

_Following orders like a good little soldier._

He had. Every damned day of his life. He'd been his father's only backup and he'd understood what that'd meant when he'd been very young, too young, probably. He couldn't see the lines between himself and his father any more. Wasn't sure what was him and what was him still trying to be John Winchester.

He'd disobeyed one order. The last one. Even then, he'd tried to keep it, had done his utmost to save his brother, even when his brother hadn't wanted to be saved.

_Please. Don't do this. No, no! You don't know! You don't know what'll happen to me! Dean, _please_! No. No. No!_

He flinched from that memory as well, eyes screwing shut as Sam's voice screamed in his head. It'd worked, he reminded himself, his jaw clenched tight. It'd worked … until Cas had shattered Death's wall. His arm tightened a little around the woman lying against him. Where had she been when he'd been trying to figure out what he should do?

Ellie stirred next to him, her eyes opening. "What is it?"

Sucking in a breath, he shook his head. "Uh, sorry, nothing …"

"C'mon, Dean," she said, easing herself onto an elbow, her hair sliding back over her shoulder as she looked at him. He could see her quarter-profile, against the lights from the parking lot, through the motel's thin curtains. "You're shaking."

"What if – what if I did the wrong thing," he said, his voice rasping. "Putting Sam's soul back? It started as flashbacks, he said, but then – now – it's hallucinations – if that's his memories of Hell – I mean, fuck, Ellie, I could hardly look at what happened to me, what I did, and his was worse, two of them, his soul was there for so long –"

"Dean," Ellie said, cutting him off. "Stop. For a second, okay? Just think about it for a moment."

He leaned back against the pillows behind him, trying to force the free-wheeling associations from taking over, pushing air in and out of his lungs to ease the bands of tension that circled his chest.

"Sam didn't want it back," he said a moment later, a shiver rippling through him. "Cas told him that his soul would be … a mess. Death said the same thing." He grimaced as the entity's description came back to him. "Uh, flayed raw. Sam tried … he tried to find a spell … to, uh, corrupt himself so much that it couldn't be put back."

Ellie lifted a brow as she looked at him. "That would take some act," she said softly.

"Bobby, uh, told me, Sam'd said that if he killed his father, it would do it," he told her. "He was going to kill Bobby."

"Soulless, one death is much the same as another," she said, her voice quiet. "Dean, I don't know why an angel would've told Sam that, but it wouldn't have worked. The soul is a part of the vessel it's born into, and it remembers that vessel – you saw that for yourself, when you were in Hell. Without the soul, the vessel itself can't be corrupted, no matter how heinous the act is. It's just flesh and blood, designed to expire."

"What?"

"Patricide, matricide, the torture and murder of infants, of thousands, of the innocent, you think the world hasn't seen every variation possible?" she asked him. "That Hell isn't full of the souls who committed those acts? The souls didn't flee."

He frowned at her. "So, Balthazar lied?"

"Or had bad information. He's just an angel, not the last word on the mechanisms of the soul," she said, with a slight shrug. "And leaving Sam without a soul, leaving his soul in Hell, damned for no reason, that would've been far worse, no matter what memories he had to face."

"Then why –?"

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head. "Sam said he isn't dreaming – or he's not remembering his dreams. That seems odd, considering the hallucinations."

"Why?"

"Because things the mind can't tolerate hit the subconscious first," she said, the small crease a shadow between her brows. "They don't come out as full-blown sensory hallucinations without some pharmaceutical assistance."

He looked at her for a long moment. He knew that. The dreams had come first, then the flashbacks. He'd tried everything he could think of to stop the nightmares. Nothing had helped much.

"You don't think they're hallucinations?"

"They're definitely hallucinations," she said, rubbing that small crease distractedly. "But I don't – I don't know. I don't think they're being caused by the trauma of his memories."

He felt the words sink into him, leaving a cotton-wool feeling that lay like a balm over the self-inflicted blame he'd been whipping himself with. If it hadn't been putting Sam's soul back … then he'd made the right decision for his brother, even if Cas had fucked up his solution.

"How could we find out?" he asked, rolling onto his side to face her.

"Somewhere at my place, I've got a stack of info about possessions," she said. "I don't know if there's an explanation there, or if I'm shooting in the dark, but if it's not trauma, and it's not coming from Sam, that's the only other thing I can think of."

"Possession? No," Dean said, shaking his head. "It's Sam, all the way through –"

"Yeah, it is," she agreed. "But something is working on him, something that he has no control over. Did he tell you what he was seeing?"

His expression screwed up a little at the recollection. "Said he was seeing Lucifer, and Hell. He told us that Lucifer was trying to convince him that he was still down there, locked in the cage."

She nodded. "And trying to get him to kill himself," she added.

"What?!" Dean asked, his voice rising. "He didn't say that."

"He said that the hallucination told him it wouldn't end unless he ended it," Ellie said. "He's aware that's an agenda that is not likely to be from his mind, Dean. It's one of the few bits of proof for him that he's not going crazy."

"Wanting to kill yourself? Nah, that's not crazy," Dean muttered.

"He doesn't want to," Ellie said. "But whatever it is does. Which is pretty damned suggestive, don't you think?"

"Maybe," he said, rubbing a hand over his face as he tried to get past the shock. "I mean, people hear voices –"

"Yeah, and we both know that sometimes those voices are not mental problems, but someone pushing and pulling, right?"

He let out his breath and looked at her. "Can we fix this?"

"If we can figure out what's going on, yeah, I think we can fix this."

"He told me," Dean said slowly, remembering the moment by the car. _I just ... you know, I feel like I did a lot of stuff I should have felt bad for, and then I paid a lot of dues and came out the other side, you know?_

He cleared his throat. "He told me he felt like he'd paid his dues and come out the other side. No guilt, just letting the past be in the past. He said he felt pretty good."

Turning to look at her when she didn't respond, he asked, "What?"

Ellie ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face. "Uh, nothing – I wondered if the hallucinations were being caused by some kind of need for punishment, or atonement, but that doesn't sound likely, does it?"

"None of this sounds likely," Dean said, his tone acerbic. "You don't buy he's squared his debts?"

"I don't know," Ellie said honestly. "I don't know what Sam sees as his debts – or mistakes – or choices – and what he felt he needed to pay for."

He realised he didn't know those things either. Sam had apologised, over and over, for choosing Ruby, for not listening to him, for breaking the trust that had been there for them. He'd known that his brother had regretted his choices, would've done anything to take them back. Wasn't that enough, he wondered? Contrition – feeling sorry for what you've done, remorseful, regretting it. Acceptance … atonement … forgiveness … he drew in a deep breath. Sam had atoned for his mistakes. He'd paid in full, no one could say he hadn't.

"I don't think he'd feel like he needed to keep punishing himself," he said. "He paid, Ellie. He knows he has. Taking the devil back to Hell, that paid for everything."

"Yeah."

He heard the question in her voice, knowing it was for him. Sam'd paid and he was entitled to stop feeling bad for everything he'd done. He'd paid – but he was still doubting himself.

"It's different," he whispered to her. "Sam was running blind, most of the time, Ruby on one side, me on the other, he didn't want to do what he did."

Hearing her soft exhale, he twisted a little, trying to see her expression.

"And you did?"

The same question. He'd had a choice, to be tortured for eternity, or to get off and do the torturing. He'd thought he'd be strong enough. He hadn't been.

"It wasn't what I did," he told her, his voice dropping. "It was that I saw – I saw – that I wasn't who I thought – hoped – I was."

"So there's no forgiveness … ever?" she asked, moving closer to him, one arm slipping around his neck.

He couldn't answer that. The man he'd wanted to be … a man like his father had been … that was gone forever. He could tell himself it was okay to be a lesser man, a weaker man, but the disappointment in himself hadn't gone away and he didn't think it ever would.

"That one choice," he said, letting himself roll back onto the pillows, his arms reaching tentatively around her. "It changed everything. I can't pretend I don't know what happened, Ellie. I can't."

"Then don't," she said. "Accept it. Bad with the good, however you see it."

She wriggled closer, holding him, her breath against the side of his neck and the steady beat of her heart against his ribs and he felt himself relax a little more with her tacit understanding.

"What you regret is as much a part of who you are as what you're proud of," she told him quietly.

He let that seep into him, along with a feeling he couldn't define or understand, incrementally loosening the tensions that he hadn't felt until now. He had a helluva lot more regrets than anything else, he thought, listening to her breathing. And they were a part of who he was, burned in, welded on, unable to be shed.

_Killing that guy, killing Meg … I didn't hesitate, I didn't even flinch. For you or Dad, the things I'm willing to do or kill, it's just, uh ... it scares me sometimes._

He remembered the single-minded determination he'd had when either his brother's or father's lives had been at stake. He remembered not even thinking about it. It'd scared him back then because there didn't seem a limit. No boundary at all, and he'd thought then that wasn't how he'd wanted to be. He'd said it to Sam – killing Azazel wasn't worth their lives. And saving them – hell, saving himself – wasn't worth the life of someone who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Had he known then, he wondered? About a capacity for darkness that'd been prised out in the pit? Or had that been a foreshadowing of a different capacity, one for making a deal that had almost brought about the end of the world, almost destroyed his brother, and himself?

He hadn't cared, when the idea had come, full blown and the only answer he could see. He'd known it would probably make things worse. Had known he was bucking the way things should have been. Had known it was the wrong decision, but none of that had mattered when he'd driven to the crossroads and buried the summoning tin.

He'd told himself that he was just setting things straight. Sam should've lived. He should've died. Some part of him had known what a fucking crock that had been. One look at Sam's face when his brother had realised what he'd done had shown him that. And by that time, Azazel dead, his father free of Hell and Sam alive, he hadn't cared anyway. Done was done. None of it could be undone and he wasn't about to try, the terms had been crystal clear and had scared the crap out of him.

Had he felt he deserved what he'd signed up for? In the dimness of the room, his brows drew together as he tried to remember how he'd felt, beyond the rending grief of Sam's death, beyond the despair of being without his family. He wasn't sure that some part of him hadn't felt that way. When Bobby'd grabbed him out in the yard, that'd been the first time he'd looked at the deal from another perspective, an outside perspective of another's view of him. The old man had been angry and devastated, all of that clear in his face, in the tears that'd filled his eyes. Bobby'd had mad at him for choosing the deal, but he'd been mad at himself too, he remembered. Maybe because he thought he hadn't done enough. He didn't know.

_You don't belong down here_, the demon had crooned to him. He'd been drowning in agony and what little thought he'd been able to hold onto had agreed. _You didn't do anything wrong, Dean, just traded your soul for your brother's life. Pick up the razor, and all this – this torment – will go away. You don't owe us your pain_.

Thirty years. Ten thousand days. Two billion hours. The time had been meaningless. Only the way it'd felt had meaning. The way he'd been losing himself. Losing everything, minute by minute, torn apart and put back together and rent into pieces again. He didn't know if he'd thought consciously about eternity. What that meant. He knew he wasn't as strong as his father. Knew that everything Ruby had told him about Hell had been the truth. Sooner or later, he would lose himself and his humanity and he would be turned into a demon. He hadn't known then that picking up Alastair's tools would hasten that process. He'd just wanted to keep the last few fragments that he could remember intact.

_Did you leave a part of yourself down there, Dean? Or did you bring some of Hell back with you?_

Dean looked down at the woman who'd asked him that, the memory of her face as she'd said it coming back to him clearly. He'd told her he didn't know and he realised uncomfortably that was still the case.

The itching, crawling sensation he'd felt in the months after being raised had gone. It'd gone in Nebraska, after he'd told her about what he'd done in the pit, after she'd heard him out and told him she loved him. It hadn't returned.

He couldn't get rid of the memories but they no longer held the same power over him, and when they did resurface in his dreams, they were triggered by something else, something more immediate. He wasn't sure if that meant anything or not. What he'd felt, what he'd known about himself was still in pieces, the last four years had upended everything he'd believed once and left him doubting almost everything. His family. His life. His choices. Himself.

If there was a way out of the mess, he couldn't find it.

Accept the bad with the good. He didn't know how to do that. Didn't know how to accept his own weakness. He'd thought he'd been honest with himself, most of the time. Thought he'd known his limits, the things he could do – and the things he couldn't. Thought he'd understood where most of the things that drove him came from.

_Yeah, you're right. I wasn't like them. I was worse. They were animals, Sam, defending territory. Me? I did it for the sheer pleasure. _

He remembered that moment. The overpass. The hum of the traffic above them. The cool shadows beneath it. The smell of the burger suddenly nauseating. His brother's worried expression.

_I enjoyed it, Sam. They took me off the rack, and I tortured souls, and I liked it. _

The smell of brimstone filled his senses; he could hear the endless moaning of the winds, through the tunnels and fissures and crevices in the heated rock.

He'd known what to do, it'd felt like. From the beginning. Maybe that'd been just a side-effect of being torn apart himself. Maybe not. He'd seen into them and known what would do it – what would hurt the most.

_You really do see, don't you, Dean?_ the demon had asked him, somewhere in the midst of it. _Up there, you saw it too, you just didn't know it. The downside of your soul, Dean_, Alastair had whispered, almost to himself. _You can see what's right but, oh, you can see its reverse as well, where light turns to dark and you knew when you hunted what they would do and where they would go and how they would feel._

At the time, he'd barely noticed the demon's musings. The soul had been in excruciating torment and he'd been working, feeling the throb of power slip into him, that pain transferred from his soul to the one in front of him. Somewhere in between agony and ecstasy, his remembered nerves had coruscated with every scream, and he hadn't been able to tell the difference, hadn't been able to judge if he'd been human or demon. All he could remember was the way it'd felt, when he cut in, the way everything had disappeared, leaving him … not numb … not exactly … but empty … and … free.

_All those years, all that pain. Finally getting to deal some out yourself. I didn't care who they put in front of me. Because that pain I felt, it just slipped away. _

He hadn't cared. Alastair had told him what they'd done, those souls strapped down to the table in front of him. Had told him in stomach-turning detail. At first, it'd fuelled his rage. But after a while it hadn't mattered. The shame he felt, a thousand times more agonisingly than pain, vanished when he picked up the razor and looked at them. That was all he'd cared about.

_No matter how many people I save, I can't change that. I can't fill this hole. Not ever._

But it had filled, he thought, looking down at Ellie. It had filled and gone and it hadn't come back. Because she'd looked at him and seen him, he wondered? Seen all of it and hadn't turned away?

Rubbing a hand over his face, another memory returned. _You ask me to open that door and walk through it, you will not like what walks back out._ Cas had told him that he hadn't wanted to ask it of him. That the orders had been clear and from higher up.

He'd walked into that place, knowing what he had to do … but … he'd been scared, he remembered. He'd been fucking terrified of feeling the slightest bit of pleasure from what he'd been about to do – even to a demon – even to _that_ demon – and when he'd started, what he hadn't felt was pleasure. Not even satisfaction that he could get a little payback. He hadn't been able to see deep enough into the demon. Hadn't wanted to see that deep. He'd gone through the things – the surface things – that would scour but he hadn't pushed past the demon's meatsuit. And Alastair had laughed.

Why had the angels insisted that he torture Alastair? At the time, he'd taken Cas' insistence on following orders at face value. Cas had been tortured by his own in Heaven. Had stopped helping them for a time after that. If Heaven'd needed someone to torture a demon, he realised now that they would've had plenty to pick from. Why him?

"Dean?"

"Uh, did I wake you?" He looked down as she lifted her head, wondering if she'd been able to feel his thoughts. Sometimes, it seemed like she did. Sometimes it felt like she knew what he was thinking before he did.

"No, what's wrong?"

What wasn't, he asked himself sardonically? "Uh, I was thinking – when the angels wanted me to get answers from Alastair," he said slowly. "I was – I, uh, I thought it would … do … something to me."

"And it didn't."

He heard relief in her quiet answer, and realised she'd known this already. Had thought it through, already.

"No," he said, searching her face. "You knew that."

She moved a little higher against him, her hand resting on his chest. "I thought you did too."

She'd told him to look at what he'd done, what he'd felt and thought, and see what it as it was. He hadn't really understood what she'd meant, then.

"I know what I did – how it felt – in the pit, Ellie," he said uncertainly. "I remember it."

"You remember it in a certain way," she pointed out. "Sometimes the things we hold as truths are more dependent on the situation than we think they are."

He frowned. "So, what happens in Hell, stays in Hell?"

"No." He caught the glimpse of one cheek rising against the parking lot lights as she smiled slightly. "No, but there are things that people do, that they feel, that can only be pulled out under certain, exceptional circumstances. You have to take that into account. And what we do, to protect ourselves, or to protect someone else, sometimes that surprises us … brings out things we never thought we'd be capable of."

He tilted his head a little, trying to see her expression. "What do you mean?"

"If I asked you to grab someone – anyone – off the street, and torture them, you couldn't do it," she said. "You think you embraced some darkness that's a part of you, down there, Dean, but that isn't what really happened, and somewhere here –" She tapped a finger against his chest. "– you know that. Who you were in the pit was … a little bit like Sam's dissociation. A part of you that could only have emerged under those circumstances, when there was no other possible recourse, to protect yourself."

"But still," he said. "A part of me."

"Yeah," she agreed. "Still a part of you. One you might never see again."

She sat up, leaning on one arm as she looked down at him. "Who we are, is an unpredictable, totally unforeseeable mix of the things we're born with, the things we absorbed in childhood, through the events of our lives, through our choices – everything. Some people don't have much of an instinct to survive. They're the ones who go through life more or less unaware of their surroundings, not knowing how to read people, not being able to sense danger or even the possibilities of it. They're not better people. They're not worse. They're just different." She shrugged.

"You were born with a strong sense of survival and then that was honed by a childhood spent absorbing danger and how to avoid it, how to deal with it," she continued. "Your reactions to extreme circumstances are going to be very different from someone else's, someone without those things in their makeup and their past."

"You're a survivor."

She glanced away for a moment. "Yeah, I don't know if that was nature or … something else … but I need – in the right circumstances, I have no doubt about what I would do to survive," she said, looking back at him.

He wondered what she'd been thinking about – what she'd been close to saying before she'd changed direction.

"The capacity is there, but that's not who you are," she said. "It's not all you are. And you know that about yourself now. You know about that capacity."

"That doesn't make me feel better."

"It should," she said, slipping down the bed to lie beside him again. "No one can use those things against you if you know about them."

_What you do, Dean, that matters, but why you do things matters more. Don't kid yourself about that, ever._

His father's voice said quietly from his memories. They'd been … somewhere … some small town, hunting for a wraith. Sam'd been gone for a year and conversations had had holes, where his brother used to be, talking around things or just stopping dead sometimes. His father had been going through a thick file of news reports, sitting on the room's sofa with his boots propped on the low table in front of it. He couldn't remember the conversation that'd led up to that statement.

"Why did the angels ask me to do it?" he asked, looking down at Ellie. "They didn't need me."

"Most likely?" she asked, tilting her head back to meet his gaze. "To break you. To make sure that the last part of the prophecy couldn't be fulfilled."

Yeah, he thought. Uriel had been in charge then, Cas on a leash.

"Were they really that worried about it?" he wondered aloud, glancing down again as he felt her exhale against his throat.

"Everything you did – everything you've done – has worried them," Ellie told him, her arm sliding over his stomach. "You changed things. You made things happen that wasn't in their blueprint. You wouldn't die and you wouldn't give up and you wouldn't play your part."

"I didn't do that much," he argued weakly. "Got in the way, mostly."

He felt her cheek lift against his shoulder. "You proved them wrong about everything, Dean," she said. "Humanity's strength. Their own weaknesses. Lucifer's plans."

"Didn't help." He shifted down a little, moving his arm to curl more closely around her. "Raphael just kept the whole thing going anyway, and Cas – Cas screwed it up even more."

"Mmm," she murmured against him. "That's the problem with no conscience … they have all the emotions and no way of understanding them or understanding the need to restrain them."

Had that been the problem with Cas, he wondered? Wanting to do the right thing but thinking that the end justified the means? Not knowing that it never did? He felt her breathing change, slipping into the steadiness of sleep, and blinked as a yawn overtook him. Sam'd been without a soul – without a conscience – and look what he'd done. Was the angel any different?

His eyes closed as he tried to remember all the things he'd seen the angel do over the time he'd known him. Obedience. Disobedience. Cas' doubts. His anger at what he'd seen as the betrayal of his kind … they tangled together and sleep pull him down without him realising it.


	3. Chapter 3 Looking Back

**Chapter 3 Looking Back**

* * *

Sleep let go gradually, in incremental layers of awareness.

Distantly, he could hear a low hum of traffic. Closer, the rustle of fabric, and that led gently to a growing awareness of the feel of her skin, warm and silky against his. Moving his hand experimentally, he found the hard curve of hip under his fingers and he rolled slowly onto his side, his fingers slipping down into a deep dip then up again, vaguely registering the corrugations of her ribs, then the heavy, full, softness of a breast.

This, he decided, was the way to wake up.

He felt her stretch along him, straightening out, muscles hardening and then relaxing, and opened his eyes, the morning light pearling her skin, turning the copper of her hair to a muted rose. There was a lot of light, he realised, watching her head turn a little as she leaned back against him.

"What time is it?"

He looked at the nightstand digital clock over his shoulder, eyes widening a little as he saw the time. "Eleven."

That was at least … six hours of uninterrupted, dreamless sleep, he calculated, moving his arm and pulling her closer. He hadn't had that for a while. The last time had also been when she'd been there and the couple of nights hadn't lasted anywhere near long enough.

"You look better," Ellie commented.

"I feel better," he told her, that little fillip of surprise that he did feel a hundred percent better driving his honesty. "No dreams when you're sleeping with me."

"Hungry?"

"Starving."

* * *

"So, these records, uh, in Rome," Dean said, tucking his mouthful into his cheek as he looked up. "You think they mean that the big-mouths are – what? All one creature?"

"Not exactly," Ellie told him. "They started off that way, but their reproduction cycle could be a number of different processes, even simultaneously. They could be literally cloning themselves, the way they do people, in which case, they might share a single mind – or a single consciousness stream –" she amended, thinking of Patrick's comments. "– or, they could be capable of changing sex in a single-sex environment in order to reproduce."

"So God managed to truly fuck up by making them hungry, able to clone anything and capable of overrunning the planet?" he asked, his tone affronted.

"That's the reason for Purgatory," she said, picking up her coffee. "This is – at best, at the moment, it's just speculation. Is Bobby at Whitefish?"

Dean nodded. "On and off, he made copies of his library and he's been driving around trying to get 'em back, clue in the other hunters, keep off the grid."

"Aside from the borax, have you found anything else about them?"

"They don't die," he said, leaning back in his chair and pushing the empty plate in front of him to one side. "The borax slows them down, decapitation and separation and burial helps, but no one's sticking around to check that's actually final. And that's stuff you knew anyway."

"Does anyone have an idea of what they want?" Ellie asked. "The two we ran into were big into claiming they're the new top-of-the-food-chain and we'll all end up as dinner."

"'Bout the same," Dean told her, thinking back to the conversation with … one of them. "They were tracking us through our credit cards, phones … everything. It wasn't just Cas' mind they reamed either. However they're doing this copying, it includes the memories locked in the vic's melon as well."

Ellie looked at him for a moment. "That's how Sam found out about Amy, isn't it?"

Dean nodded, looked down at the table top.

"Have you got new aliases?"

"Smith and Smith, no relation," he told her sourly. "What about you?"

"I've had a couple of clean sets for a while," Ellie said, finishing her coffee and putting the cup down. "Sam said you'd been to see a professional."

"Not sure how professional Frank is," Dean said. "He's paranoid and nuts."

"Sometimes they're the best." She smiled at him. "What about what you're driving?"

"Stolen," he said with a faint sigh. "Like the other three before it. You still in Richmond?"

"Yep." She pulled out her purse and extracted cash, leaving it on the table. "It's clean. At the moment." Looking around, she waved a hand at the door. "You want to go for a walk, get some air?"

"Sure."

* * *

Dean drew in a breath, clean and scented slightly by the river. "I couldn't let her walk."

Walking beside him, Ellie nodded. "I know."

He turned to look at her. "You tell Sam that?"

"He knew it too," she said, slipping her arm through his as they turned toward the river and walked down the neatly concreted path that ran along the bank. "He knew why you did it, Dean. He didn't know why you wouldn't trust his judgement."

"Yeah, hearing Lucifer all day long, why wouldn't I trust him?"

"He doesn't see it like that," she said. "He sees himself managing his problems and you discounting what he asked from you."

"I can't –" he started to say, then stopped, head ducking and brows drawing together. "What happened – all of it – since Ruby … I can't – we're not – it's not the same as it was," he finished disjointedly.

"You lied to him about it," she said quietly. "That's what hurt you both the most."

"I know," he grated, his shoulders hunching up a little. "I – what am I supposed to do? Tell him that I can't trust him? He didn't trust me – he went off to find her without a damned word about it."

"He knows that," Ellie said. "He knows he should've told you the story before he left. You're right," she added, looking at the river. "It's not the same as it was. He doesn't trust you to listen to him and you don't trust his judgement. But you're not going to fix that by doing the same things as you've always done."

Dean snorted. "What should I've done?"

"Told him the truth," she suggested mildly. "Told him that you can't trust what he's doing and saying if he's already made up his mind that you're going to jump the other way. Told him you're prepared to listen, but he has to be prepared to extend some kind of rational argument your way as well?"

She had a point, he thought, playing the idea out in his mind. Sam'd taken off without giving him the details because his brother had already decided how he was going to react. He'd gone behind his brother's back because he hadn't been able to be sure that Sam wasn't being influenced by anything else. Some kind of discussion between those two things might've actually helped.

"You're never around when I need you," he grumbled at her.

She smiled. "What happened in Dearborn?"

What'd happened, he repeated to himself. He didn't know. "Osiris. Egyptian god, from way back when, apparently."

"God of the afterlife, of the underworld and death," Ellie said, nodding. "What was he doing in Dearborn?"

"Uh, Bobby said he had some kind of circuit court thing going," Dean answered. "He didn't seem to be much interested in regeneration and the cycles of life, more into weighing of guilt and sentencing accordingly."

They walked down to the river's edge and watched the play of sunshine on the water, the ducks coming in to land along the stretch near the far bank, the river's daily routine and business.

"So he found you."

He looked sideways at her, wondering at the lack of inflexion in her voice. "Yeah."

He took a deep breath. "I know what you're gonna say."

Ellie looked around at him and smiled. "Do you?"

"Jo – he raised her spirit somehow," he said, running a hand along his jaw as he looked over the water. "She told me I was carrying crap I didn't need to."

"She was right," Ellie commented. "How'd it go down?"

"He had this court – kind of – in a barn," he said. "Got me there somehow. Sam found it, and told him I had a right to an attorney."

"An attorney?" Ellie turned to look at him, one brow lifting.

He smiled. "Sam did pre-law."

"Okay," Ellie allowed dubiously. "Then what?"

"He was going to call three witnesses."

"Witnesses to what?"

"The things I felt guilty about, I guess," Dean answered. "He called Jo, got her out of wherever she was."

"Wait a minute – this was to weigh your guilt?" Ellie asked, the small crease appearing between her brows as she looked at him.

"Yeah."

"Then why not call your father?" she asked him and he looked away. He'd felt a lot more guilty about his father's sacrifice than anything else, he thought. A helluva lot more guilty. He shook his head.

"I don't know."

"This was about the way you felt about Jo's death? And Ellen's?"

He nodded. "I know we talked about it," he said. "I couldn't shake it free. Up until Carthage, I didn't think much about Jo. Another hunter, too young, too inexperienced. The day she died, she was different though. She handled herself … I don't know … you could see the woman she might have become."

He thought back and remembered her face, her logic, her will, indomitable, implacable, forcing even Ellen to face the truth about the situation. She'd been afraid, he remembered, but she'd clenched her jaw and risen above that, her courage adding another dimension to her that he'd been unable to forget. And that was a part of the problem, he realised suddenly. He really had seen the woman she would have become, and that was where his guilt lay.

"She should have been able to grow into that woman."

"Yeah," Ellie agreed softly. "But no matter what you tried to do, she was dying. So she chose to do what she could."

He looked at her, considering. "I guess. She wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for me."

"You think so? She was a hunter, even Ellen couldn't stop that. She'd already faced the possibility of death. She was an adult, Dean. She made her choices from what she wanted, not to please anyone else."

He turned his head and looked at the river, the endless flow of the water, from the mountains to the sea. "I asked them to help."

"And they agreed," she said to him. "Not because it was you asking, but because Lucifer was out. And you had the Colt. And they thought it would work."

She turned away from the river, walking up the bank for a few feet, and settled herself in the long grass, drawing her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on her crossed arms. "If I'd been around then, I would have gone with you as well."

He felt a deep shiver pass through him at the thought. "I'm damned glad you weren't."

He walked up the bank and dropped beside her, his shoulder against hers.

"Not the point," she told him. "The point is they knew what they were getting into, and they knew what the risks were. You told me the wounds from the hellhound were deep. Do you really think Jo would've been kidding herself over them?"

"No," he admitted. The second Ellen had pulled the shredded remains of Jo's coat aside, they'd all known exactly what was happening. He hadn't wanted to face it, not then, but he'd had to.

"Did you think Jo wouldn't have stopped if it'd been Sam – or her mother – the hounds had taken down?"

"No."

"Then why would you think it was about you?" she asked. "Why would you take her death on your shoulders?"

"I didn't think –" He looked at her, his brow wrinkling. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that we always have the choice of what path we take. But sometimes people take the easier path, the one that someone else has chosen for them."

"And Jo didn't?"

She smiled slightly. "She certainly didn't follow the path Ellen chose for her, did she?"

"Did I?" he asked her. "Did I get them involved in something I should've handled myself?"

"You were going after the Devil, Dean," she said. "You can't do everything alone."

"I froze," he said, remembering the moment he'd become aware of the hellhounds, the reactions he'd felt. "I don't know – I had the Colt –"

"You couldn't see them. Couldn't risk wasting bullets," she pointed out. "Dean, what you did had nothing to do with what Jo did – or Ellen – or Sam. It doesn't matter how many times you go over it, trying to convince yourself you're to blame, it won't be true, and you know it."

"I didn't want to do it alone."

She turned to look at him. "You didn't ask them to be there because you were afraid of dying alone."

For a moment, he thought about arguing that. He still wasn't sure that it wasn't true. Bobby had called them. They'd needed the extra eyes and he'd thought they'd be out of the line of fire. Just eyes and ears and a getaway vehicle.

He remembered the picture the old hunter had taken. Not one of them had been smiling in it.

"Just look at it honestly." She didn't look at him, watching the flow of the river, the life that filled its surrounds. "You really think Jo – or Ellen – would've been there if they thought it wasn't worth the risk?"

He felt a knot undo itself, somewhere down deep, letting his arguments go with a long exhale. She was right, he thought. Neither had wanted to die, he was sure of that. But … both had known the risks and both had gone along. "No."

He glanced at Ellie. He'd had this conversation, or one similar to it, with both Bobby and his brother. Neither had ever managed to get that admission from him. Looking back at the river, he realised that neither had ever forced him to look at from the perspective of Jo or Ellen. They'd told him, repeatedly, it wasn't on him but that's as far as it'd gotten, and that hadn't helped.

"Osiris didn't nail me over Jo's death though," he said, a few minutes later.

"No." Ellie turned her head to look at him. "You felt guilty about the kitsune, because she'd done what you and Sam think you've done – killing for family. But that wasn't really true, and somewhere you knew it. And Sam knew it too. It wasn't really that – it was lying to Sam about it."

"Yeah." He ducked his head, feeling that astonishment again, that how-did-she-know-that-surprise. No matter how many times he'd gone over his reasons, it'd come back to the same thing. He'd do it again. He couldn't take the risk. "How do you know me better than I know me?"

A half-smile lifted a corner of her mouth as he lay back in the grass and she looked down at him. "You think you're so opaque no one knows what you're thinking, Dean?"

"No one but you does," he retorted, closing his eyes, feeling the sunshine on his face. "I can't do this with anyone but you. Why is that?"

"Trust?"

Opening an eye, he looked at her. "I guess."

Except that some part of him couldn't believe in her, he thought. He did – but then he didn't. He wasn't sure he understood it, understood why he felt like that. The last couple of months had been a fucking roller-coaster of crap, but he'd felt it, at the back of his mind, wondering if she was coming back, wondering if she'd meant what she'd said, wondering if what he'd told her had had the same impact on her as it'd had on him.

He rolled onto his side, propping his head against his hand, elbow digging into the grass. "I mean I trust you –"

"Except that you can't trust I'll come back, that I won't disappear on you again," she finished for him, her gaze on the water's edge.

His mouth opened and remained that way, not sure if he wanted to protest or agree.

"I worry about you too, you know," she said before he could make up his mind. "When Penemue told me about Castiel –" She shook her head, her expression screwing up. "I wanted to be here."

He'd wanted her here too, he thought, ducking his head. He felt her gaze shift to him and looked up.

"You've had a lot of people leaving you," she said to him. "The reasons don't matter after awhile, good or bad. And I know it's in your mind, when we lose contact, or I can't get back fast enough."

There was no sense of rebuke in her words or her voice. He'd lost too many people to argue with her about it. He couldn't help the way his thoughts tracked when they were out of touch, when all he had in the nights was his imagination and his memories and too many damned scenarios that he couldn't shut out. But, he realised, he'd never considered how she might be feeling when she couldn't get to him. Maybe that was because she wasn't all that forthcoming on the details of what had kept her. He knew that once a job was past, she put it behind her, didn't dwell on it if she could avoid it. The last few weeks had been bad and she'd known what he'd been going through, unable to reach him, unable to get past the Leviathans that lay between them. He hadn't thought of going to find her, had waited till she found them. For the first time, he wondered why he did that.

Sitting up, he moved closer to her. "I'm sorry."

She looked at him, her eyes searching his. "I didn't tell you about Alaska, did I?"

"No." He straightened, his brows drawing together. She'd been gone for six months on that case, and had never told him about it, brushing off his questions and changing the subject whenever he'd brought it up. It had made him wonder why, what could have happened. The long claw marks that scarred her side from breast to hip had appeared after it.

"That morning, in Manhattan, I got a call from a hunter – Denis Monaghan – you know him?"

He shook his head, unwilling to interrupt now that she was finally going to tell him about it.

"His brother is – was – a vulcanologist," Ellie said, wrapping her arms around her knees, her hunched posture telling him its own story. "He was working on the Chigmit Range, a couple of hundred miles from Anchorage, and his team was attacked by tskuareg."

The name seemed familiar to him, and after a moment he remembered the hunt his father had gone on, when they'd been kids. John had left them with Jim Murphy for that, coming back torn up and exhausted. The monster was similar to a wendigo, in its speed and savagery. There was a page on it in his father's journal, but they'd never heard of another case.

"They're rare," Ellie said, as if hearing his thoughts. "Like the wild ranges, snow and ice. Probably the basis for the yeti and bigfoot mythology to begin with. They're not usually that close to civilisation, though, and it was the first I'd heard of one, but Denis had worked the north for a long time, and he filled me in when I met him in Vancouver. We got a flight to Anchorage and he already had a private plane standing by to take us to the range."

She knuckled her forehead absently, and he could feel her discomfort with talking about it. She'd told him she'd been careless. He still couldn't quite imagine that.

"Basically it was a mess," she said, ducking her head. "By the time we got there, they were dead, and I didn't think – Denis ran for his brother and I was too slow behind him. It was near dark and a cat-and-mouse game for most of the night, and I thought I was in a defensible place but it wasn't."

He thought of the scars along her side, wondering how she'd gotten away with just those against a monster that his father had called 'an intelligent grizzly with the mouth of a great white shark'.

"You, uh, can kill them with fire or electricity, you know," she continued after a moment. "I don't know why but Denis thought it was something to do with the disruption of their body temperature." She shrugged. "I started fires along one side of the camp, thinking I could drive it off and get to the plane but it got there before me and there wasn't much left. It was hiding under it, and I fired a shot into the fuel tank, blew it all to hell."

In his mind's eye, he saw the mountaintop, fires burning randomly, providing the only light, reflecting from the snow. Saw the explosion. Saw her clearly, despite his unwillingness to look, fighting on her own against something stronger, faster and at home in its element.

"I just wanted to get out of there, so once I checked the camp again, I left," she said, hunching a bit more, rubbing her arms as if she could feel the cold of the mountains on them. "I didn't do a good enough job on the cuts I'd gotten and they got infected. Took a couple of days to get to the delirium stage and I fell off a cliff and broke my leg."

Turning to him with a half-wry, half-sour smile, she said, "That slowed me right down."

At the time, Dean thought, he'd been driving back and forth across the country, trying to find a way to work with his brother again, trying to find a way to kill the devil. He'd been thinking of her, dreaming of her, a lot in that time. And she'd been trying to walk out of the wilderness with a broken leg. He shivered, not sure if that reaction was because of how he was imagining that process, or at what could've happened.

"Anyway," Ellie said, closing her eyes and tipping her head back. "It took me awhile to get back to Anchorage and I had to have the leg rebroken and set when I got home."

"Ellie …"

She shook her head. "Didn't tell you that sorry story for a sympathy ride, Dean," she cut him off. "It's just that it was a hard job, and probably the thing that kept me going was wanting to be with you."

He blinked at the matter-of-fact statement, his heart stuttering in his chest, not knowing what to say. She didn't seem to expect an answer from him.

"You remember asking me if I believed in God?"

He nodded, remembering his doubts.

"That was when I believed," she said, her chin resting on her crossed forearms. "I got so lucky so many times, I couldn't not."

Lucky, he wondered? How many people called getting stuck in the middle of the Alaskan mountains with infected wounds and a broken leg lucky? He had, despite what many thought, a vivid imagination. Alastair had explained to him, in some depth, that it was the reason that he'd been so easy to torture so successfully, that imagination that could envisage the worst things, magnify the pain, amplify the despair; that could put him so easily into another's feelings.

As a hunter, that imagination was a gift and a curse. It made thinking like the creatures he hunted simple. It made knowing what they did unbearable. Alastair's recognition of his potential in Hell had been based on seeing how good he'd been at torturing himself through it. He had no trouble in seeing how it'd been for her, a gruelling nightmare that probably felt like it wasn't ever going to end.

"Uh, we got a different definition of 'lucky', Ellie."

She turned her head and grinned at him and he saw that the shadows of her memories had gone from her eyes. "C'mon, I could've died a hundred times on that walk, and I'm here, still alive."

"Why didn't you tell me … before?"

"I didn't want to confuse the issues," she said lightly, looking away. "Didn't want you to feel like there was a burden or pressure on you when we were in Nebraska. It was more important to get through what we did."

She didn't bitch the might've-beens. Didn't make much of what she'd done or what'd happened to her. He wondered how she did that; just let it all go and thought of herself as lucky to be alive, to be here. To be with him. It took him a moment but he realised that was one of the things he loved about her, that ability to see things without the clouded judgement of emotion-edged recall.

"How do you do that?" he asked, not intending it to come out, unable to stop it.

"What?"

"Just …" He stopped, looking around at the river and the grassy bank, the sunlight playing over the water. "Just let your past stay in the past, sit here and listen to all my crap, not get confused about it – fuck, I don't know – all of it?"

He let out a frustrated exhale and got to his feet, moving behind her and sitting again, his legs to either side of her. Putting his arms around her and drawing her back to lean against him, he ducked his head, pressing his lips against her neck. He wanted to know more about that trip, he thought. The details. But not now. He needed time, needed the time to let what she'd told him sink in.

Ellie smiled, turning over his hand and dropping a kiss on the palm. "I don't hang on to stuff the way you like to. Life is change, it's fluid, mutable. People come and go. Believing in a better life after this one, or getting another shot at this one helps too."

"So you don't mind when you lose people? Your friends? Your family?" He couldn't hide the disbelief in his voice.

"Of course I mind. I grieve. I mourn them the best way I can. But then I hope and pray that they're happier on the next level, and I let them go," she said. "If it was someone that maybe I could have helped, or saved, or rescued, and I couldn't, then I tell them I'm sorry, and I try to atone for that mistake or misjudgement or whatever it was. But I don't do guilt, Dean. It's a pointless emotion, one that punishes without relief, without taking action to make things right, or let them go."

"Why are you with me?" he muttered peevishly against her ear. "You're too healthy."

"Maybe you're supposed to learn to be healthier?"

"I'm not convinced that I can." He looked past her, at the birds wading on the far bank.

"Sometimes, I feel – I feel like every choice I make, every choice I made, since I got Sam involved again, has been the wrong one," he said, his voice dropping. "There are so many of them now I don't know how to start – how to figure out what to do about them."

"Why do you think they were the wrong choices?"

"Because nothing good came of any of them." He shook his head tiredly. "Going to see Sam, before Jess was killed. What was that about? I didn't want to be alone? And look what happened?"

He felt her ribs expand and relax as she took a deep breath. "According to Sam, he'd been dreaming of Jess' death weeks before it happened, Dean. And the demon who took over his friend, Brady, told him that Jess was introduced to Sam purely to ensure that revenge for her death, her very specific death, would drive him back into hunting … so, whether you'd asked him to help you or not … she still would have been killed. And he still would have found you and started hunting again."

He couldn't say anything to that. Sam'd told him what Brady had said, a long time afterwards. Had told him he had nothing to do with what'd happened, how he'd been played. Brady had said that Sam had been getting too involved in normal life, he remembered. Picking out a ring for Jess, going for his law school interview – they'd needed him hunting. Azazel had said something like that as well. In the cabin when Yellow Eyes had been wearing his father.

She huffed out another impatient exhale at his silence. "What I'm saying is that a lot of the choices you're beating yourself up over weren't even your choices – not in the sense that you could've chosen anything else."

She twisted around, looking at him. "Are you going to tell me that it's never occurred to you that you being around, the choices you've made and the actions you've taken were influenced by something else? Something that was maybe trying to help you?"

"You mean God." He looked at her, and then away again. He had lost the little faith he'd had in God when he been in the Garden, spoken to Joshua.

"You've been resurrected twice. You befriended an angel, and really, that's not that easy. You stopped the Apocalypse, you and Sam, and you did it through self-sacrifice, both of you. That's one of the highest virtues God acknowledges." She looked at him intently. "You're really going to tell me that all that doesn't matter? That it somehow doesn't count when stacked up against what's gone on?"

He looked down. "We let Lucifer out of his cage; I think that cancels out stopping the Apocalypse."

"Oh, Dean, that's crap and you know it." Ellie snorted in exasperation. "You're just going to let Azazel, Uriel, Raphael, Alastair and Lilith off the hook, are you? They had nothing to do with it? It was just you and Sam to blame? Come on."

"Alright," he agreed reluctantly. They'd had help. He could see that. It didn't change a damn thing about how he much he'd lost over the last few years. Didn't change how when he'd had the choice, to believe in something he'd wanted, he'd made the wrong choice.

"How about something more personal?" he said quietly. He'd wanted to tell her everything the last time, but it had felt like they had no time. Actually, he'd wanted to spend the time they did have with her without talk, he corrected himself tersely. "How about I agreed to Sam's request and went to Lisa and Ben instead of trying to find you?"

She flinched slightly against his arms and he tightened his hold, not wanting to have this conversation but at the same time, knowing they had to – at least once. He hadn't believed in her and there was a part of him that still didn't, not all the way.

Ellie turned her head away, looking at the river. "Dean, you've done the best you could. I always knew you wanted a family. It wasn't the way you –"

"No," he cut her off sharply. He didn't want to hear her reasons for him – the excuses he could hide behind. What good would hiding be now? They had this one chance, this one opportunity to get this right, without lying about it or trying to make out like it hadn't nearly torn them apart for good. He wanted to get it right. He thought he had to, or that part that couldn't believe wouldn't leave him alone.

"What I told myself was that you had gone because you wanted to be gone," he said, remembering the craziness of his thoughts after Cas turned up at the house. He hadn't known what to believe, that she'd survived the attack by Raphael, that she hadn't. Over the following months, he'd become more and more convinced that she wasn't coming back. Or, he thought, he'd spent more and more time convincing himself that she wasn't coming back.

"Cas wouldn't take me to you. He told me that you'd been clear about it and I should respect your wishes," he continued, the words coming out faster, edged with derision. "When I was – when I hit rock bottom, and I figured our best and only chance was going to be handing myself over to Michael –"

He stopped, taking a breath, remembering the sudden decision to leave his brother and Cas in Blue Earth and go and see Lisa. He'd told her that he'd thought of her and Ben when he imagined himself being happy. He couldn't remember why he'd said that now, only that his main reason for going there had been to give Lisa a heads-up about what was going to happen and to let her know he'd make sure she and Ben were kept out of it all. She hadn't been who'd he wanted to say that to either.

"I couldn't find you. Cas wouldn't fucking budge. And I thought – I _decided_ – that meant that you didn't want me – us," he told her, looking away when he heard the raw note in his voice.

By then, he'd pretty much given up on her, he knew. Had convinced himself that she hadn't meant what she'd said to him – or had had the time to rethink it and come to a different conclusion. He still didn't know how much of what of he'd felt then had been a despair for the lack of choices he and Sam'd had in fighting Lucifer, and how much had felt like a betrayal by her – of his trust, of the feelings he'd had but hadn't looked at, of what he'd wanted even when he couldn't acknowledge it.

"We got closer and closer to D-Day, stopping Pestilence, meeting Death. I even asked him if he knew if you were alive or dead. He told me you were alive." He drew in a deep breath. "And that kind of confirmed it, at least in my head. You weren't coming back. You didn't want to found. You didn't want – didn't want to be with me."

He'd known at the time that the ancient entity wasn't going to be happy with him asking personal questions, but Death had been surprisingly gentle with his answer, if a little impatient to get back to the business at hand. It hadn't made him feel any better, knowing she was alive. Somewhere in Montana, Death'd said. Living her life, he'd thought.

"Sam wanted me to get out of hunting, to live a normal life. He thought, like you did, that I wanted that," he said, rubbing a hand over his face at the memory of his brother's expression in the dashlight of the car. Intense. Demanding. He hadn't known what to say. It was, as nothing else ever would be, a last request from his little brother.

"Maybe I did, but it didn't really work out the way I thought it was going to," he told her. It hadn't worked out at all, he thought. He'd tried to remake himself into what he thought they wanted and the effort had been killing him by inches.

"What I really wanted was Sam back." Looking at her profile, he swallowed nervously as he realised he couldn't see her expression. "And I wanted you back. That's all I wanted. I did a lot of thinking over that year. I got a lot of things clear. One of them was that if I gave up hunting, then I was giving up on myself, the part I'm proud of, at least. The other thing was that I'd given up on you."

And he had, he thought, closing his eyes. He hadn't admitted it to himself back then. Had kept trying to make it about his promise to his brother. His doubts about what she'd said. His feeling that whatever he wanted, whatever he needed, was going to be taken away and he had to stop wanting and needing.

"It wasn't the right choice, Ellie. I could've said no to Sam, and looked for you, could've told Cas as soon as it was over to find you, could've waited at Bobby's. But I didn't."

"Sam would've known you were going to try to find a way to break him out, if you'd told him that you were going to try to find me," Ellie commented quietly.

"I didn't do it for Sam," his voice was suddenly low and bitter. "I did it because I was angry at you, for not being there when I needed you. I did it because it was easier to believe you'd lied to me than it was to believe – to believe that someone – that you – cared about me."

* * *

Ellie closed her eyes. Within the lash of his anger at himself, was the truth of how he'd felt. Alone. Betrayed.

They'd both made choices that hadn't worked out the way they'd thought they would, she thought. She wasn't convinced that what'd happened, what was still happening, wasn't by the machinations of something else.

Even more so than him, she wasn't supposed to be here. Cas had told her that according to the lines and spheres in Heaven, her destiny was to have finished the day her parents had died. Nothing was coincidental, but maybe that one moment had been, that John Winchester had been the hunting the witch who'd raised that elemental, that they'd arrived in time. Nothing since then had gone unwatched, she thought. If not by the angels, then by something else.

It still hurt, those memories of watching the little house and seeing him there. She had a feeling that it would take time before those feelings were banished completely. He couldn't find a way to trust that she wouldn't disappear again, she knew. It was too easy for him to believe that he didn't deserve to have something of his own. Too easy for him to give up on what he wanted if he thought a sacrifice had to be made, to be the one to make that sacrifice. She'd loved him for a long time, and she was aware that a part of her was still afraid that in the right circumstances, he might choose to sacrifice what they had between them. Not a lack of trust in each other, she realised. A lack of faith that what was there was strong enough to withstand circumstance. And at least a part of that was wanting too much. Needing it too much.

"No one said you had to be perfect, Dean," she said softly to him, leaning back against his chest.

She felt a shiver run through him, the tightness in his arms relax fractionally.

"What a relief."

Even his sarcasm couldn't hide that lightening, she thought, smiling at the comment.

"It might come as a surprise to you, but you know, I'm not perfect either," she added, tilting her head up a little to see his face.

He ducked his head down beside hers, and she felt the lift of his cheek as he smiled. "Could've fooled me."

"All just an illusion."

His breath was hot against her neck, the brush of his mouth sending a thrill through her skin. "Some kind of magic trick?"

"That very thing," she said, turning and meeting his lips with hers.

The kiss had meant to be light, to help them get past those emotions that couldn't be resolved, that just had to be waited out. It wasn't. It seared through her and she was hardly aware of her doubts vanishing inside of it.

"That's some trick," Dean murmured against her mouth and she opened her eyes, seeing his dark and half-lidded with desire. "I – uh – I think I've had enough fresh air."

Nodding, she tucked her feet under her and straightened up, feeling the thrum of reaction when he took her hand and led them back down the path toward the motel.

* * *

Ellie leaned back in the booth, watching the line of cloud darken the horizon. It was too indistinct to decide if it would make this far tonight or tomorrow, she thought absently.

"What I don't get is why they even listened to us," Dean said, finishing his beer.

Turning to look at him, she said, "Are you kidding? People love interventions when they're stuck."

She picked up her glass, grinning at his expression.

"I could'a done without the bees," he said sourly.

"Why didn't Bobby's spell work?"

"Chicken feet have to be, uh, chilled, apparently, and with all the power fritzes they were causing in town, they were pretty warm."

"Okay."

* * *

Leaning back as Kelly set their food on the booth's table, Dean let his gaze linger on Ellie, admiring the way the candlelight lit her hair to several different shades, from gold to red, tinting her skin and catching the gold flecks in her eyes. It wasn't, he acknowledged, a little wryly, just the way she looked. And it wasn't just that electric awareness between them, a physical buzz that twitched at his nerves and lit him up when she looked at him a certain way – or smiled.

"Can I get you another beer?" Kelly asked, interrupting his thoughts. He looked up at her and nodded.

"Yeah, thanks."

Turning to look at Ellie, the waitress asked, "Anything for you, ma'am?"

"Thank you, I'm fine," Ellie told her, with an easy smile that was also dismissive, Dean thought. He could use that on Bobby the next time the old man tried to get him to talk about his feelings.

"So, what are you doing about the levis?" Ellie asked when the waitress had gone.

Looking down at his food, Dean shrugged. "Frank's trying to figure out who might be one," he said, cutting into his steak. "Bobby's still trying to get his library back. Cas is gone."

"These things are almost unkillable," Ellie said. "They have no natural predators here, why are they dicking around in the background instead of just starting to eat their way through the population?"

"Maybe they gotta plan?"

"Yeah, but what?" Ellie asked. "Get into the corridors of power and …?" She shook her head. "Even if they duplicated the President, they can't do that much to control the population, they're too few."

"You said something, before," Dean said, pushing his mouthful into a cheek. "About breeding?"

"If they're a single organism, one mind – multiple shoots, then it doesn't make sense that they're not just cloning themselves along with everyone else and taking over," Ellie said, half to herself. "If they can breed, why aren't they? It's not like they're gonna run out of food anytime soon, no matter how much they increase in the short term."

"Okay," Dean said, not sure he was following. "So maybe they can't just reproduce without some sort of extra help?"

"Maybe." Ellie looked up at him. "That would be good news."

He snorted. "Yeah, ya think?"

"But ultimately, that would have to be the goal, wouldn't it?" she asked him, looking back at her food. "Because even if they managed to figure a way into the highest echelons, living like … gods … or whatever it is they want, that's still a dead-end for them."

"Did those documents give any idea of a life span?"

"No," Ellie said, nodding. "If, to all intents and purposes, they're immortal, that would change things."

Pushing his empty plate to one side, Dean picked up his beer, eyes half-closing as he thought of something else she'd said earlier.

"Your angel friend, the Watcher," he said, swallowing a mouthful of beer. "What'd he say about Heaven?"

Ellie grimaced. "Said Cas was feeling pretty vengeful when he returned to confront Raphael," she told him. "He killed every angel that had followed the archangel, left thousands dead."

"He was pretty vengeful down here too," Dean said. "I think the final body count was a couple of hundred."

"You think that was the levis' influence, or the distortions to his mind from the subsuming of so many souls?"

He glanced at her, his face screwing up. "Does it matter?"

"Probably not," Ellie agreed. "How are you doing with that?"

"Cas' death?" he asked, looking away.

"Yeah."

"Uh, you know," Dean hedged, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "What can I do? He's dead."

"He's not dead to you until you let him go," Ellie said quietly. "And it's not just what he did to Sam, Dean, you know that."

No, he thought, it wasn't just that. That had just been the icing on the cake. Making the deal with Crowley, lying to them – to him, endangering Lisa and Ben, ignoring everything the demon had been doing, torturing Dr Visyak to open a door that should never've been opened –

He felt the rancid flush of anger warming again and took a breath, shaking his head to dissipate those thoughts. He didn't want to waste the time he had with Ellie, thinking about things he couldn't get a handle on and didn't want to forgive. In fact, he thought, since he was between jobs and so was she, it would be a good time to just forget about the mess the world was in.

"Uh, when was the last time you were in New Orleans?" he asked, leaning forward and lifting a suggestive brow at her.


	4. Chapter 4 Time Out

**Chapter 4 Time Out**

* * *

_**Carrs Mill, Pennsylvania**_

"Uh, last year," she said, propping her chin on both hands. "Why?"

"Let's go. Now. Tonight." He waved a hand vaguely toward the window. "Just get the hell out of everything for a little while."

Ellie studied him, one brow lifted quizzically. "Just like that?"

He shrugged. "I've earned some time off."

And he needed it, she thought, looking down at her plate. Needed to do something that would uncouple the guilt train for a while and let him go. She had nothing but more research lined up and that could wait a little while longer.

"Sure," she said, pushing her plate to one side and getting to her feet.

"Just like that?"

She smiled at him. "Just like that."

As he stood and pulled out his wallet, she turned back to him.

"We'll need to go via Richmond."

"Why?" He followed her out of the diner and onto the street.

"Didn't pack anything for a vacation in the Big Easy," she told him.

* * *

_**Richmond, Virginia**_

Standing next to the apartment's door, Dean looked curiously around the small space. He'd been here once before, bringing her back from the seal job they'd done in Chicago, but she hadn't invited them in that time.

It was very small, he thought. Three rooms and all of them, it looked like, wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling shelving, filled with books, baskets, boxes and more books. They were squeezed above the vertical spines, stacked in teetering piles on every horizontal surface, lining the window ledges and covering the desk in the corner. In front of the tiny kitchen nook, a small table was barely visible under mounds of notes. The bedroom, partially seen through the open door, was also lined with shelves and he glimpsed a dreamcatcher, suspended over the double bed, its coloured glass and crystals catching the light.

"How do you live here?" he called out, stepping a bit further into the room to look through the open doorway.

He heard a snort from the other room and Ellie emerged with a grey canvas bag and her backpack, dressed in clean jeans and shirt.

"I'm not here that much," she told him, dumping the bags on the floor and turning for the table. "Didn't seem much point paying a lot of rent for a place I don't use all the time."

"Where'd you get all –" He waved a hand vaguely around at the books and artefacts, noticing a half-dozen curse boxes, sigiled and locked on one shelf. "– this stuff?"

"Here and there," she told him distractedly, gathering a handful of notebooks and taking them to her pack. "There's a huge amount of information out there, if you know where to look."

They never had, he thought, turning to look more closely at the titles on the shelf nearest him. From the moment he'd gone to get Sam, they'd never had the time to find out more than what they could on the road, through their few contacts. He watched her look around the room critically and realised a part of him envied her that freedom – to go looking for answers without being pushed and pulled by destiny. It felt too much like self-pity to him and he shook it off.

"We good?"

She nodded and picked up her pack, reaching for the bag. He beat her to it, and grabbed the handles, opening the door and stepping through.

"What's with the notes?" he asked as she followed him, closing and locking the door behind her.

"Might as well pick up some of the stuff I'm nearly out of, while we're there," Ellie said prosaically. "Never know when it might come in handy."

He headed down the stairs, shaking his head. "We're not working."

"No, not working, just taking advantage of the situation," she assured him.

"I mean it," he said, stopping and turning back on the step below her, forcing her to a halt. "This is – it's margaritas and-and gumbo and blues –"

"And sweet horns and red beans and bourbon and beignets and –"

He grinned at her. "Right. And a _lot_ of hot –"

"Right."

* * *

_**I-85 S, North Carolina. Four hours later.**_

"I don't know," Dean said, frowning at the highway. "I didn't see it that way until – well, until Ben, I guess."

Ellie was sitting in the passenger side of the truck, legs drawn up and arms wrapped around them, tucked into the corner between the back of the seat and the door. They'd switched after the last refuel, Dean taking the wheel and looking through the selection of CDs she kept in the console. _Fade To Black_ was playing softly under the quiet rumble of the diesel engine and the noise of the tyres.

"Then you started to think about it?" she asked, glancing at his profile.

"Yeah," he admitted, remembering how that responsibility had kind of crept in, not just responsibility but a desire – a need – to teach Ben whatever he could. The memories of his childhood, of his teenage years, of schools and towns and hunts and injuries had come back more powerfully every time he'd looked at the kid.

"It wasn't that it was so awful," he said, looking for the words to explain the weirdness of his feelings about his life now. "In some ways, it was – I mean, I remember Dad coming in one night, just about out on his feet, torn up by something and collapsing in the bathroom and I must've been about eight or nine, not knowing how to stop the bleeding, not knowing what to do –" He shot a sideways look at her, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. "– he could've died there, and that – that wasn't – it was too much, you know?"

Pulling in a deeper breath, he continued, "But, at the same time, it felt like we were apart from everything else, you know? Like we were special, charged with this mission to save the world."

Snorting a little, he shook his head. "Delusions of a kid, that's all it was."

"Except that you were saving people," Ellie remarked mildly.

He stared through the windshield. It hadn't felt like that, sitting in the ER of some hospital, looking at his little brother connected up to a gazillion tubes with a machine doing his breathing for him.

"I thought about that – and being dragged through a hundred schools – and not getting a chance to find out what else I might've been good at – and I looked at Ben and thought there was no way – no way at all – he was going through that," he said, his voice dropping.

She didn't say anything and another fast sidelong glance showed her looking out the passenger window, only a quarter-profile visible.

"Not that it mattered what I tried to do," he said. "Those djinn came after us and there was nothing I could do about it – didn't even know what'd happened until Sammy gave me the shot and I came to."

"Didn't you ever wonder how your mom's parents managed to be hunters and raise a child?" Ellie asked, her gaze still on the darkness outside.

"Luck," he said, his tone blunt.

"Luck doesn't last that long."

He couldn't deny that. "Maybe it did, for them. My mom wanted out. She wanted a normal life."

"So did you."

"Not like that," he said, flicking another look at her. "And I brought my past down on them."

"How did the djinn find you, Dean?" Ellie asked, turning her head to look at him. "You were out, no contact with anyone, not even Bobby for the last six months. How did they know where you lived?"

He opened his mouth and closed it again, realising he didn't have an answer to that. "You think someone tipped them off?"

"I think that finding someone, someone who's using a fake Social Security number to get paid, and living somewhere they've never lived before, and keeping their distance from old contacts, is hard to find," she said, rubbing her forehead. "Especially for the type of searcher who doesn't habitually use facial recognition software or have access to national law enforcement databases."

He'd never wondered how they'd found him. It'd just seemed inevitable that something would, if he gave it enough time. But, he realised, she was right. He'd been there for almost a year, and nothing had come, then the djinn had – Sam'd said they'd turned up a couple of weeks before actually making their move. The waitress in the bar had been step one. And they hadn't been interested in Lisa and Ben, not really, he thought, his expression screwing as he tried to prise apart the hallucinatory memories from the real ones. Just him.

"Maybe they got lucky," he said, feel his uncertainty growing.

"Maybe."

Looking at his watch, he realised he was getting tired. "You want to stop somewhere, get some sleep?"

"Definitely," Ellie said, unfolding herself from the seat and pulling out a map book from the glove box. They'd passed Charlotte half an hour ago. "Should be an exit in ten miles."

"Ellie," Dean said, hearing her put the book back in the glove box. "You think someone wanted me back in? Who?"

"I don't know," she told him softly. "I just don't think that you're allowed to get off the board yet."

_Or ever_, he thought, his expression souring, seeing the exit sign and town ahead and putting his foot down a little more.

* * *

The motel was the only one open and had a dozen vacancies. Ellie got back into the truck and waved a hand to the far corner of the U-shaped lot. "Thirty-three, in the corner."

Driving across the lot and parking in the slot outside of room thirty-three, Dean got out of the truck stiffly, stretching his back and neck. The air was warmer here than Pennsylvania, and held the first few scents of spring, early blooms from some bush planted close by.

He felt slightly disoriented, getting his bags from the tray of the truck and following her into the room, looking around at the drab anonymity of the place as Ellie poured lines of salt along the window ledges and across the doorway. The last couple of months he and his brother had been on the road in different cars, dealing with different crap, the end of the world still there, lurking just out of sight. Eve and Purgatory. Cas' decisions and betrayals, and monsters that couldn't be killed, wouldn't fucking well die – he'd been running on empty for so long he wasn't sure he'd recognise any other feeling. Except the ones that had kept him going when nothing else could. A fainter-than-faint sliver of hope that he could barely look at it.

"You think we need it?" he asked, dropping the bags at the foot of the single queen bed.

"Doesn't do much for the levis, but it'll give us some warning of most other things," she said, her tone matter of fact as she straightened up and headed for the bathroom. "You want a shower?"

He nodded and picked up his duffel, putting it on the end of the bed and unzipping it. Most of his clothes were clean, a stop at the laundromat in Carrs Mill having taking up some time while he'd been procrastinating about what else he should have been doing. He pulled out the bottle of whiskey and put it on the table, looking at it as he went to the kitchenette to grab a couple of glasses. He hadn't wanted to drink since she'd turned up. At least, not more than one.

"All yours," Ellie told him, coming back out and dropping the half-full bag of salt on the kitchen counter. "Leave me some hot water."

He gave a regretful exhale as he turned away. "Can't promise anything."

Stripping off in the narrow confines of the small room, he found his thoughts dragged back to their earlier conversation. Who would've wanted him back so much they'd given a monster his location? Who'd even known where he'd been, he considered a second later? Cas'd known. And Bobby and Sam, which maybe meant that the Campbells had known for longer than he'd thought as well.

The water was hot and plentiful, gushing from the rose and he stepped under it, eyes closing as the heat loosened the knots in his shoulders and neck, and the flow sluiced the days' travel grime from his hair and skin.

He smirked a little as he heard the soft rattle of the glass door being opened, turning around and looking at Ellie as she stepped in beside him.

"What?" she said, affecting an innocent look as she took another step closer and slid her arms around him. "I decided against trusting you to leave me some hot."

"Pr'bly jus' as well," he mumbled, ducking his head to taste the skin along her neck. "Not known for leaving much."

He felt her laugh against his neck, the brush of her lips over his ear, and pulled her closer.

The rush of heat and want overtook him, even though he'd been expecting it, had been braced for it. His skin suddenly felt hyper-sensitised to everything, every droplet of water that fell from the shower, every breath she let out, the lightest brush of her fingertips over him. He wasn't sure why he kept thinking he'd get used to it, that it would gradually become less electrifying, more mundane. Nothing he'd felt for the woman he held had lessened with familiarity, even figuring what all those emotions were finally had only seemed to make them stronger.

He tensed as her hands slid over him, tipping his head back and letting out a soft, deep groan at the throbbing response she drew from him, light-headed suddenly, that slow, turgid fire like a drug in his blood. He looked down at her and a deeper pulse rocked him, at the sight of her eyes, pupils dilated enormously, the way the water beaded and ran over her skin, and flashed like diamonds where they caught in her lashes.

He wanted to ask her how she did it, wiped out everything but the two of them, shook him free and left him just himself, but the words were lost in a thick fog of arousal and pleasure and he couldn't focus on them, or why the question had seemed important or what he wanted her to say. Her arms slipped up his stomach and chest, curving around his shoulders and he lifted her higher, pressed her against the smooth tiled wall and was lost as he slid into her, searing heat and oscillating pressure and the sweet, frictionless glide deeper until he couldn't feel anything else but that irresistible upwelling of need, governing every movement, every heartbeat, every breath.

* * *

_**Eight hours later.**_

The light was wrong, Dean thought, opening his eyes just a fraction and looking at the curtains that covered the window opposite the bed. Wrong angle. Wrong colour. He turned his head a little and caught sight of the clock on the nightstand. Two p.m. the glaring red numerals said.

Closing his eyes again, his mouth twitched in a small smile at the thought. He couldn't remember a single dream, and he felt completely relaxed, not a knot or stiff muscle anywhere. Just the usual waking up tension thrummed faintly through him and he rolled onto his side, his hand finding warm, smooth skin.

At the touch, Ellie rolled toward him, eyes opening a little and a smile curving her mouth when she saw his expression, and the mostly distant arousal crackled into immediacy as he saw his desire echoed in her eyes. He couldn't get enough of her, he thought, leaning closer and kissing her. He was getting the feeling that might never change.

* * *

_**I-85 S, Georgia**_

The night air was a lot warmer, and the truck's windows were open, letting it in. There wasn't much traffic on the big road, occasional trucks barrelling along past them, making their miles and filling the CB with chatter as they went by, then gone.

Ellie shook her head, her hands light on the wheel as she thought about his question. "No, I met Marcus after Sonja died, nearly a year later," she said, remembering the bitterness that'd filled the older man then. "He'd been hunting with Gordon Walker and a guy called Kubrick and heading down a pretty dark path."

Walker he knew, and Kubrick sounded familiar, although he couldn't come up with a face to match that name. "How'd his daughter die?"

"A shape-shifter," Ellie told him. "Took the form of her boyfriend and tortured and killed her."

That rang a lot of bells and Dean shifted in the passenger seat, turning to look at her. "When was that? And where?"

"In, uh, 2003, I think," Ellie said, frowning at the road. "Sonja was living in Nashville."

It had to be the same one, Dean thought. Sonofabitch had been around for a long time before they'd run across it.

"What about Laney?" he asked, shoving those thoughts aside. Almost every monster they'd put an end to had had a long career. It was like bucking the odds on the lottery to hit a creature as it was just starting. "How'd you meet her?"

"That was up north." Manoeuvring around a rig, she slipped back into the left lane, glancing into the mirrors. "Met her and another crew of hunters when a skinwalker pack hit a small town close to the border."

She flicked a sideways glance at him. "Didn't she tell you?"

He ducked his head, turning to look out the side window. "We didn't – uh – talk much."

He heard her soft snort, and looked around curiously at her. "That doesn't ... um, that doesn't bother you?"

For a long moment, she was silent, staring through the windshield, then she shrugged. "It was your choice."

He straightened a little, looking at her more closely. "You left that night."

"You two already looked pretty cosy," she pointed out, her tone light. "Past is the past, Dean."

He wasn't sure what to make of that, frowning as he tried to remember the details of the aftermath of the haunting. They'd been in the bar, decompressing, and Ellie had come in, stopping to talk to the sheriff. He'd watched her brush the guy off, and come up to the table, glancing at him and then at Laney and saying her goodbyes. Laney's hand had been rubbing over his thigh, he remembered.

Maybe she was right, he thought. He'd walked out after her, but he hadn't asked her to stay. Maybe he'd wanted more back then, but he hadn't known it. Or hadn't admitted to it.

"So, how is it possible that you've seen every Jack Nicholson movie ever made, but you haven't seen Postman?" she asked him and he felt a slight wave of relief in the change of subject, smiling and shrugging.

"I don't know. It didn't – it's about a guy who has an affair with someone guy's wife then kills the dude, isn't it?" he asked, twisting around in the seat.

"Yup."

"That's not – I like Nicholson either nuts, or cold-blooded," he said, waving a hand deprecatingly. "I couldn't get into – or like him – like that."

Ellie laughed softly. "You _are_ a righteous man."

He gave her a mock scowl, shaking his head. "Now, you wanna talk about _The Shining_ –"

"No, I don't want to talk about _The Shining_," she cut him off. "You haven't even read the book."

"Book's the same as the movie!" he protested.

"Not even close!"

"So, there's a few differences, I mean – the main things are there."

"How would you even know?"

"I read bits of it," Dean admitted with a half-smile.

* * *

_**I-65 S. Three hours later.**_

"No, I tried the dojos for a while, but it was too formalised and I felt like I didn't have the time to devote to it, so I compromised and found someone else," Ellie said, and Dean tucked his chin against his chest, hiding his reaction. His father had held the same opinion. Quick and dirty if need be but get the job done.

"There was this ex-Marine, he had a place in Revere and I went there four hours a day. The first time I met him, he told me to buy a gun," she said, smiling at the memory. "Stand ten feet away and shoot to kill."

"He didn't want to teach you?"

"He told me I didn't have a hope," she corrected him. "I couldn't tell him why I wanted to learn but he agreed eventually. Just told me I'd have to keep working on my speed and use my brain more than my muscles."

It wasn't bad advice, he thought, trying to imagine himself confronted by a determined teenager wanting to learn hand-to-hand combat. He didn't have issues with women doing the job. There were a few out there who were damned good at it. He had a lot of doubts about anyone doing the job who thought just wanting to do it was enough. It had, he realised, taken the woman next to him years and years of dedicated training in a helluva lot of things to make her as able as she was – and she was the first to admit that she'd been lucky, that she wouldn't have made it past day one without help.

"Where are we?" He looked around then glanced at his watch. "You want me to take over?"

"No, I'm good for a bit longer," Ellie said. "We're about forty miles from Mobile, I think."

They'd be there in another three-four hours, he thought, rubbing a hand over his face. He felt disconnected from everything, and it wasn't a comfortable feeling, sitting there at the back of his mind.

"So, how'd Carter get you faster?"

She hiccuped, swallowing a laugh. "He put those weights on my ankles and wrists and I had to do everything in them for three months, including all the training and the mat work," she told him, her tone a little caustic. "When he took them off, it felt like I could fly."

He tried not to laugh but it came out anyway. "How old were you?"

"Fourteen." She looked over at him. "I was ready to kill him after the second week but I could hardly move around the floor."

"You do any kendo work?" he asked her, still smiling. He couldn't really imagine her at that age. She'd been ten when he'd first seen her. Then twenty at the next meeting. And she'd always seemed a lot older than her actual years. "My dad had me and Sam using shinai for months until one of the schools reported Sammy to social services, thought he was being abused."

"Kind of was, wasn't he?"

"Hey, the whole point was to get out of the way!" He could vividly remember the way those damned bamboo swords had stung and bruised but had left no other damage. He'd been head-to-foot bruises as much as his little brother, training with both Sam and his dad. He'd never asked his father where he'd learned the martial art. It'd been another in a long, long line of things they'd just done, as kids, growing up.

"I did six months with them," she said. "And yeah, that helped the reflexes too."

"Your, uh, aunt, didn't flip out when she saw the bruising?"

Ellie smiled. "My aunt had a lot of interests. She wasn't the type to tuck anyone in at night."

Behind the flippancy in her tone, there was something else, he thought. She didn't give him a chance to ask.

"What I want to hear about –" Ellie turned to look at him, her mouth curving up. "– is what could possibly've been going through your head when you tried to break into Peggy Coulsen's place when you were seventeen?"

Dean felt his mouth fall open. "Sam _told_ you that?"

"In passing," Ellie confirmed, looking back at the road. "Said it was your story to tell."

"It wasn't my idea!"

* * *

Listening to him describing the decision-making process that'd gone on between him and his brother, then the planning of the attempted alcohol theft, all the things that'd gone wrong, not through their mistakes, but through bad luck, strange coincidence and random encounters, Ellie struggled to keep her face straight.

Sam'd told her years ago to ask Dean about that, saying it was one of the few times he remembered with unreserved fondness. He'd been thirteen, the instigator of the scheme to get a couple of cases of beer from the basement storeroom, and Dean had been a reluctant co-conspirator, in charge of the actualities of getting through the security Peggie was renowned for around her alleyway saloon, and through the number of booby-traps she'd laid out for just such an attempt. The two of them had been in sync for once, Sam'd said, and as Dean gestured wildly, describing them sneaking in through the old coal-chute at the back of the building, she could imagine it easily.

"We finally got through the honey-trap and made it to the storeroom," he was saying, and Ellie turned her head to look at him, seeing his eyes lit up with the memory. "Sammy was swallowing the damned feathers and choking, and I couldn't get them off my eyes –"

"But you got through? You actually got the beer?"

"Uh," he said, shaking his head and tilting it a little as he looked at her sheepishly. "No. The lights came on and Peggy, my dad and Rufus were standing there, just waiting for us –"

It'd been a while since she'd laughed like that, she thought, trying to keep her attention on the road, the vivid images he'd conjured for her flashing back and forth through her concentration. And a while since she'd seen him laugh, open and ruefully shaking his head as the details came back.

"– spent two days cleaning it all up and putting everything back," he finished. "Took a lot longer before Rufus stopped calling us the 'chicken boys'."

"Oh!" Ellie turned to look at him. "That's where that's –"

"Ah, c'mon, you're not going to ruin my vacation by telling me that's still goin' around?" Dean cut her off. "You know what? If it is, I don't wanna hear it."

To their left, the sky had lightened enough to see the Gulf, and Ellie wound down her window, breathing in the tang of the fresh air, feeling remarkably refreshed, instead of bone-tired by the all-night drive.

She glanced around as Dean stretched his legs out and leaned back into the corner of the seat.

"Shit, I haven't thought about that in years," he said, eyes half-closed. "Dad wasn't even that mad, he was laughing too hard. I just – I just wanted things to stay like that, you know?"

Nothing could, she thought, but didn't say. He knew that. He'd wanted his family to stick together but that had been one of the impossible dreams, one of the dreams from a childhood that'd had too few.

"Do you still want that?"

He didn't answer for a moment, and her fingers closed a little more tightly around the wheel, the effort not to look at him, to keep her eyes on the road, draining her.

"In some ways, yeah," he said finally, straightening against the seat back and looking through the windshield. "It wasn't real, hell, even back then, I knew that, somewhere. But it felt like the safest thing in the world, the three of us together. I guess … I kept needing that."

Turning to look at her, he added, "But in other ways, I don't want it anymore. I been looking out for my family my whole life; it feels like maybe I didn't spend enough time looking out for anything else."

He looked down the road. "Pull over, I'll take it for a while."

She wasn't tired but she flicked on the indicator and pulled onto the shoulder, stretching her back and shoulders as she got out and walked around the rear of the truck. Her heart was thumping uncomfortably at the base of her throat as she wondered what it was he would eventually figure out about what he wanted. Sometimes, he seemed to be clear on it, and she'd seen it in his eyes. At others, his past would come creeping back and all she could see was the load on him, that old load of responsibility and too few choices that were just for him.

* * *

_**French Quarter, New Orleans**_

"You got a place in mind to stay?" Dean asked, slowing down as the car ahead hit the brakes.

"Mmm-hmm," Ellie said, looking up. "Got a room at a hotel on Chartres, but stop at the square first, I'm not going to feel like we're here until I've had some breakfast."

He nodded and pulled into a space on Decatur, miraculously empty in front of the café, saliva already filling his mouth as the smell of the beignets was carried on a capricious morning breeze from the river.

The café looked the same as it always had, Dean thought, ten minutes later as he licked the powdered sugar off his fingers and watched the people around them. It was still early and the tables were full, tourists and those trying to ward off a hangover from the night before, students and businessmen and women getting their milky chicory coffee and sweet fried dough to go.

It was one of his favourite cities, a melting pot of cultures and food and music, where no one and nothing ever hurried. It was a place of hidden darkness and passions, a city with a penchant for indulging every taste, an atmosphere of indolent pleasure; there was always time here to stop for a meal, for a drink, to listen to the music.

Probably why the monsters loved it so much too, he thought, his mouth twitching up to one side. New Orleans – hell, Louisiana – had always had plenty of them.

Mythological creatures and magic of all kinds had settled in the warm and fertile land between river and lakes and sea, hiding in the dense jungle-like natural vegetation, fed with the energies of abundant food and water and belief. Hoodoo and vodou and every other kind of quasi-religious appeal to gods of other countries, to ancestors and the elemental or animalistic spirits, the place was teeming with spells and curses, old and still potent, lurking in the shadows.

"What kind of stuff did you want to get here?" he asked Ellie, leaning back in his chair as the last of the beignet was washed down with a mouthful of café au lait.

"Um, you know," Ellie said, shrugging. "The graveyard dirt in the Garden District cemeteries' has always been the most powerful. Same with the yarrow that grows there." Her face screwed up a little as she thought about it. "I haven't been able to get goofer dust for months, and I got a good tip on a supplier on Tchoupitoulas for that, along with palo santo and –"

"Okay," he cut her off. "But there's no job here, right? Nothing you came across and thought you might have a look at?"

"I thought you trusted me?" she asked, leaning on her forearms.

"I do – mostly," he said.

"Mostly?" Ellie repeated, shaking her head. "No, there's no job here. Just … good food, great music, a bit too much liquor –"

"– and a lot of hot –"

"– insatiable –"

"– record-breaking –" He felt a flush of heat zip down his body, heard his voice deepen suddenly, watching her play along, her voice husky, her eyes half-closed as she looked across the table at him.

"– world-shaking se–"

Dean lurched to his feet, throwing a twenty on the table and pushing his chair back.

"Let's go."

* * *

The tall French windows were covered with plantation shutters, letting in bars of the afternoon light and striping the large room. Ellie had told him it was the last room they'd had left, double-sized with a big bathroom and high ceilings, the fans circling lazily above them, just enough to keep the sweetly-scented air moving. Antiques lined the walls, a big flat-screen tv on one bureau looking anachronistic, some weird device from the future, but positioned precisely to be watched from the bed.

The half-tester bed was very comfortable, he had to admit, the soft linen and hand-made quilt pushed down to the end in a tangle. The whole damned place was very comfortable, he amended a second later, looking around. A long way from the sort of rooms he was used to, but not so grandiose that he felt out of place. It was quiet and private and, if he'd thought about it at all beforehand, exactly the sort of place he needed to get out of his head – out of his life – for however long they could stay.

He stretched out slightly, trying not to disturb the woman lying alongside of him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her arm soft and loose over his stomach. It'd been different again, the frenzied beginning slowing down and turning into something else entirely, something that couldn't be hurried, an exploration that felt vital and necessary and that had built their arousal in a way he couldn't describe, even to himself, the sort of agony of need he couldn't've imagined dealing with under any other circumstances but that he hadn't wanted to end, here.

When release had come, it'd been so powerful he thought he might've lost consciousness, riven through and reamed out by a combination of volcanic sensation and fierce emotion, left feeling as clear and transparent as a piece of glass, the sort that could be found sometimes on a beach, tumbled and smoothed and clean. That feeling had lasted the few minutes following the after-shocks had slowly dissipated, then, contradictorily, he'd been filled with a longing that even now felt as if it'd sunk down into his bones.

_I know what I want. But I can't have it – not how you live._

At the time Lisa'd said it to him, he'd been hard-pressed not to react to the irony. He'd thought the same thing, had wanted what he couldn't have and some of it had been because of his life, and some of it had been because the choice had been taken away from him by someone else and there was nothing he could do to get it back.

He'd heard the song playing a few weeks later, a golden oldie, catching it on the radio in between changing tapes. That feeling had returned, the longing and the knowledge that at least some of what'd happened had been the manipulation of things too big – too powerful – for him or anyone else to be able to fight against. That hadn't changed how much it'd all hurt.

He didn't want to let this go, he thought, looking down at Ellie, his hand lifting to brush her hair back from her forehead, fingertips lingering just a little bit too long against the warmth of her skin. Maybe Tessa had been wrong, and he was going to get his second chance after all, or maybe some things were stronger, somehow, than even destiny.

The only problem was, he still couldn't figure out a way to make it work.

Sam wasn't talking to him. The big-mouths were doing god-knows-what and on the side, looking for them both. He was running out of options, in every direction.

_You gunna worry about this now_, he asked himself derisively? _Here?_

No.

He didn't want to think about his life, except that with her here, he spent more time thinking about it than he did when he was with Sam or on his own. Not just the problems, he recognised. Talking about growing up, trying to explain how he'd wanted to be some kind of father to Ben, remembering the memories that weren't bad … the times when they'd been the sort of family he kept wrapped up in his heart … she let him talk about the times when everything hadn't been so fucked up and somehow that let him accept the other things better. He wasn't sure how that worked, but the lightness from the drive into the city in the dawn hours was still there. It'd been a long time since he'd felt that.

_You don't need anyone._

He'd been trying to find a time or a place to tell her he did since she'd turned up at Bobby's yard. He didn't know why it felt harder to do that than to tell her what he felt, what he finally figured out for himself. That'd been hard enough. Hard to work out. Hard to admit to. Harder to get out. At the same time, he'd wanted to say it – had wanted to tell her, in his own words and with the feeling filling him – and maybe the year he'd spent in Cicero had helped him in that way, telling people what they meant to him.

"I need you," he said, very softly, freezing as she stirred slightly against him.

If she woke, would he be able to say it to her? He wasn't sure. It felt a helluva lot more exposing than telling her he loved her. Didn't seem to matter that both were the truth. He needed someone – not just anyone, just the one person – to feel like he wasn't going around in circles, wasn't somehow dying on the inside from all the things he'd never been able to say to anyone.

Someday, in the unspecified and unlooked-at future, he'd thought he would be able to tell her everything. She already knew more than anyone else, all those puckered scars that wouldn't heal, most of the things he'd thought of himself, things that still made him wonder what it was she saw in him. Someday, if they survived, he wanted to. He needed someone else – he needed her – to know him. He hadn't really believed it until he'd woken to see Sam sitting there in Lisa's garage, telling him he'd been out of the cage for almost the same length of time he'd been trying to be normal, but he knew now that someone was never going to be his brother. Or Bobby.

_I wanted my brother back, alive!_

They hadn't known how it'd been for him, hadn't seen how bad it'd been, had thought that he was better off not knowing, grieving and torturing himself with nightmares filled with shame and guilt.

_You protect your brother!_

He'd tried and failed, as he'd tried and failed to protect his father. As he'd thought he'd failed to protect the woman lying beside him, not just once, but over and over. Would it've killed the damned machinators of his life to have let him have one win, just one, he thought with a scowl, sending a vaguely accusing look at the ceiling. Let him go to uphold the deal he'd made not thinking he'd brought about her death as well fucking up his brother's chances of surviving? Or even given her a hand to get back to Sioux Falls a few weeks earlier?

_Man, we are so fucked up._

Had he said that to Sam or had Sam said it to him? He couldn't remember now. It was the truth. Sam'd wanted normal his whole life and had turned away from it when he'd had the chance – not, Dean considered, that he'd really had the chance, but they'd both thought it was possible back then – and he'd wanted a family – his family – people to trust in him and that he could trust, and he'd found out that wasn't as easy as he'd thought.

Was there a place between what they did and what they'd thought they'd wanted that would work? Could he do what he had to do, what he was good at, and still get what he wanted?

"Dean?" Ellie slurred against his skin and he looked down. "Go t'sleep."

He let out a soft exhale and closed his eyes, hearing the whisper of her breath against him, the very faint whir of the fan turning slowly above. Maybe there was a place like that, with someone who knew him. Knew him all the way through.

* * *

Ellie woke at ten, stretching out luxuriously against the warmth of the man sleeping beside her. She felt completely relaxed, every muscle smooth and tension-free, just the faintest thread of desire as she opened her eyes and looked at Dean.

He'd been restless as she'd fallen asleep earlier, she remembered. Not moving and not tense, exactly, but something in him not resting either. She'd wanted to remind him that they weren't working, that he was supposed to be relaxing but she'd been too tired and too drowsy to make the effort. Easing herself up on one elbow and looking down at him, she felt a rush of emotion fill her at the sight of his face, unshadowed and peaceful for once, his lashes rock-steady against his cheeks. It was very rare to see him like this and it gave her an inordinate amount of joy when she did.

Slipping out from under the weight of his arm, she sat up and stretched again, glancing at the lamp on the nightstand and deciding against turning it on. There was enough light from the street to see the room. She got up carefully and walked to the bathroom, closing the door before turning on the light. In the mirror's reflection, she thought she looked more relaxed too.

Unsurprising, she admitted to herself, a warm flush of memory returning. She didn't know how he did it, if it was the ease he had in himself, or the focussed concentration, giving whole-heartedly with the same abandon as he accepted … it could've been any one or all of those things, she considered, stepping under the flow of hot water and picking up the soap. It could've been a lifetime of looking for intimacy and being unable to share it except when skin to skin, where armour could be left off and emotions could be let out, all without requiring a commitment of mind or soul or heart. She had the feeling he didn't know what he did or how, didn't think about it, just acted on instinct and let himself feel out loud.

_Do you trust me_, she'd asked? _Mostly_, he'd said, and she ducked her head into the spray, eyes closing tightly. Mostly was as far as she'd managed as well, for all that she didn't think she could love him any more than she already did. She could trust him to tell the truth but not necessarily know what that was. She could, she thought, trust him to love her, but still choose another if that choice was forced on him. She could trust him with most of her, but not all. Would that change, she wondered, lathering shampoo into her hair and rinsing it out again.

Maybe. Someday.

It wasn't vital for the here and the now, she told herself, stepping out of the cubicle and pulling the towel from the rail, drying off slowly. Right now, what was vital was taking a break. Laughing again. Not feeling the pressure of the world that was going to be overtaken by God's voracious experiments if they couldn't find a way to stop them, or a brother who needed time on his own to think through his choices, or anything else.

She pulled a comb from her bag, the warmth of the air drying her hair as she slid the teeth through it. There was a great place to eat on Dumaine and the bars along Bourbon would just be warming up by midnight, the people unused to a twenty-four-hour-a-day drinking regime staggering along the street with their go-cups and the seating inside freeing up.

As she walked back into the bedroom, she glanced at the man still sprawled on the bed, turning away from him and going to the robe, ignoring the temptation to just spend the next few days in the room, ordering in. The city had too many things to offer, and the world beyond it wouldn't let them be indefinitely.

The windows were open and the night air was cool but a long way from cold, scented with gardenia and night-blooming jasmine, with the lingering traces of sweet olive still warmed from the days' sun. She'd packed light clothes, sleeveless blouses, wide-legged silk shorts, but she reached past them to the dress, deciding that it was the only thing that would stay cool enough for what would probably be a long night.

It was a smoky grey, in chiffon and lace, with a very light and scarcely tailored bodice suspended by a pair of thread-thin straps, and a flaring skirt that fell from waist to mid-thigh, in several layers of almost-sheer material. Pulling it over her head, she turned around, the fabric as light as air against her skin. Not exactly suited to anything else in her life, it'd been an impulse buy a couple of years ago in Milan. Despite buying it with someone in mind, she'd never worn it and she was relieved to see it fit and looked the way she'd hoped it would.

"Hey."

Turning back to the bed, she saw Dean looking at her, propped up on his elbows as his gaze slid from her feet upward, his eyes widening appreciatively.

"Hey," she said, a little self-consciously, catching her hair and lifting it. "You like?"

His gaze dropped to look down the length of his body, and he cocked a brow at her. "What do you think?"

Ellie laughed. "Good."

"What's the occasion?"

"Food," she told him, turning back to the robe's mirror to pin up her hair. "I'm starving."

"How long've I got?" he asked, rolling off the bed.

"I was ready five minutes ago."

"Huh."

* * *

Spice of andouille, flavours hiding in the roux base of peppers and onions, crawfish and okra, cornbread piled to one side to wipe the plate, and Dean felt like he was breathing in the filé gumbo rather than just eating it.

The restaurant was tiny, dark and redolent with the scents from the kitchen, the clatter of cutlery on thick china, the low, but sharp beat of _fais do-do_ under the chatter and laughter that filled the long, narrow room. He'd been to the city a hundred times and never found this place, he thought, looking around. The customers were clearly local, mostly blue-collar, the oddly-Brooklynesque syntax catching his ear. Men, women and children of every age sat at the formica tables, eating jambalaya and gumbo, étouffée and red beans and rice, po'boys and muffalettas, washing them down with ice-cold beer or glasses of the cheap, rough red the restaurant served in gallon jugs.

"How'd you find this place?" he asked Ellie, watching her wipe the edge of her plate with a hunk of bread.

"I used to know someone who lived around here," she told him, looking up and glancing past him. "_Ça__ va_, Etienne!"

Swivelling in his chair to follow her gaze, Dean's brows shot up as he saw the man standing behind him.

"_Ça__ va_, Ellie," Etienne Robichaud said with a wide grin. "And Dean Winchester, it has been too long!"

"I thought you guys moved," Dean said, getting to his feet as he saw Colette and her husband, Michel, walking up behind the tall houngan. "After Katrina."

"Ah, _cher_, you should know us better than that," Colette said, hugging him as she reached the table. "Nothing could keep us away from here."

He looked over the diminutive woman's head at Ellie. "You knew they were here?"

"I called Etienne," Ellie told him, the corner of her mouth tucked in slightly. "He said they were back."

The table was a small one and with five of them sitting around it, it got a lot smaller, Dean thought, looking over at the Haitian priest. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be back in Haiti?"

"Haiti is – not as it was," Etienne said, looking down. "For the time being, I have a community to serve here."

"And you," Colette said, looking at Dean. "You have some explaining to do!"

"I – wha-?" Dean looked at her.

"You disappear, we hear you are out of hunting, with a family – _merde_, _cher_, there is a lot to catch up on." She looked up as the restaurant's proprietor commandeered another small table and chairs, and Dean swallowed, glancing at Ellie as the three got up and moved the furniture against their table and sat down again. Ellie shook her head slightly, indicating, he thought, that she hadn't told them what he'd up to in the five years since he'd last been here.

"Yeah, well, it's a long story," he began, when everyone was seated again and more food filled the two tables.

"Leave him be, chère," Michel admonished his wife. "Let him eat, at least."

* * *

"You could've warned me," he said to Ellie as Colette, Michel and the houngan left them in front of the restaurant, four hours later, only after extracting promises to see them the next day. Ellie had already gone through her lists with the couple and verified they had everything she wanted.

"And miss the look of surprise on your face?" Ellie asked, slipping her arm through his. "No way."

"Where're we goin'?"

"Bourbon Street," Ellie said, tilting her head to look up at him. "I'm planning on mixing that rough red with a daiquiri."

He snorted, lengthening his stride a little. It wasn't more than a half hour walk along the street that ran riverside all the way to the Quarter. Again, the evening had felt so – not ordinary, but something like it – in her company, talking to the people whose house he'd stayed in for nearly two months, who weren't exactly hunters but who knew about it. Etienne practised Haitian vodou, distinct from, yet related to the myriad of variations that had come along with the Africans who'd been enslaved and brought to the region. The practises weren't religious, exactly, but were spiritual and most were based on the Bible and had incorporated Christian teachings, either through preference or duplicity. Colette and Michel imported and made up all kinds of the things that both the genuine practices and the tourist trade demanded, from pre-made gris-gris to dried and powdered animal bones, from the ubiquitous effigies that were required for sympathetic magic foci, to the colourful and completely useless charms and amulets that sold like hotcakes in the Voodoo museum gift shop.

"How come you didn't tell me you knew Etienne?" he asked Ellie.

"I didn't know you knew him," she said with a shrug. "Until 2007, I didn't even know he was Haitian, I thought he was Creole. He mentioned Colette as a possible supplier when I called him a few months ago, and it wasn't until you told me about the revenant that I figured it might be the same family." Looking up at him, she added, "That's how it goes, you know?"

He nodded. It was, in this life. A seemingly random and disconnected network of people who were all doing their best to stay out of sight and somehow managed to pass along information or trade stories or catch up despite the fact they were nearly all hopeless paranoids.

"Peggy's still around?" After Ellen's place had burned, it'd seemed like no one was willing to stay open and risk the same thing – though he could've told anyone who'd asked that the roadhouse had burned because of Dean and Sam Winchester.

"Yeah," Ellie said. "You haven't been back?"

Shaking his head, he said, "Didn't want to get involved with too many people once we knew we were targeted."

And it was the same now, he thought with a disgruntled frown. Places where he could be nearly normal, where Sam could, where they could find their own people, people who understood their lives, who lived similar lives, people he didn't have to lie to about every damned detail … those places would be the first places the levis would search for them.

"What is it?" Ellie slowed down and he slowed reluctantly with her.

"Nothing," came out automatically and he glanced down at her and shook his head. "Just seems like every time I get a – a – time like this, you know, just – there's no way to make it regular."

She was silent for a moment, then she tilted her head to look at him. "I guess we better do something about that."


	5. Chapter 5 A Weight of Guilt

**Chapter 5 A Weight of Guilt**

* * *

"You know, most people would definitely consider this 'work'," Dean said, leaning back against the weathered tomb and looking down at Ellie. She was kneeling on the earth beside the tomb, a small garden trowel in one hand, digging in the soft dirt.

"We're not most people," she said, filling the bag and rocking back onto her heels to draw the string tight. "Besides, this isn't _work_-work, it's just being prepared."

He couldn't argue with that, he thought, extending a hand to her as she looked up at him.

"It's too close to work," he grumbled, glancing around the still, dark cemetery. It was five past twelve, the moonlight fitfully lighting the cracked and crumbling paths and tombs, hidden intermittently by cloud racing across the sky. The bourbon and tequila he'd downed an hour ago had almost dissipated from his bloodstream.

"Just the yarrow, and then I'm done," Ellie promised, slipping the bags of dirt into her backpack and waiting him to follow her along the path. "You said you weren't tired," she added as he came up beside her.

"I meant –" he started, then cut himself off, seeing her fleeting grin. "You know what I meant."

"Yeah, I did, and the night's still young," she countered. "C'mon, I'm not digging up bodies."

"You ask every guy you go out with to go to graveyards and dig up the dirt?" he asked, not sure if it was the digging that was irritating him or the idea of the other guys that had been there before him.

Ellie laughed softly. "No, most of the others were very respectable."

"What? Meaning I'm not?"

"Meaning you, of all people, should understand," she said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he told her, brows drawing together a little. She was right. And he thought it should've been a relief to go dig a little graveyard dirt with her, neither of them having to hide who they were or what they did. "Uh, I don't know. Just doesn't seem all that – uh – you know –"

"Romantic?" she suggested, her lips curving up slightly at the way the scowl deepened.

"Vacation-ey," he corrected, catching that small smile in the corner of his eye.

"Just the yarrow," she told him, waving a hand to the corner of the small, walled cemetery. "Then we'll go back to Bourbon Street and have some fun."

He nodded reluctantly, uncertain if he wanted to go out now. He wasn't sure of what the hell it was he was feeling, only that he hadn't really envisaged making midnight forays into boneyards when he'd thought of coming here.

_You did normal and you couldn't take it_, he told himself, slowing down as he reached the corner. Dropping to the path next to the tall, yellow-flowered plants, Ellie had pulled another lot of small, cloth bags from her backpack and was snipping at the plants with a pair of secateurs, dividing them neatly into flowerheads, leaves, stems and yanking a few out of the ground to cut off the roots.

A lot of the time he'd spent in Cicero had been doing things that'd seemed hopelessly pointless. Or downright awkward, he thought, memories of trying to talk to Sid, over a beer or a game of pool, intruding. At first, the routine – the job, the day-to-day, the idle conversations about the house, food, tv shows, movies – that'd been kind of comforting. Then it'd gotten predictable. Finally, it'd felt like a slowly materialising prison, growing up around him incrementally, more and more options being removed. A place where nothing seemed to change. Looking around the moonlit mausoleums and tombs, he couldn't make that complaint right now.

Even seeing Colette and Michel again, and the houngan, had been a kind of normal he couldn't quite get his head around. A lot of the conversation had been about what'd happened in the years since he'd seen them last, not the apocalyptic things, not the raising of the dead or the devil, or the introduction of an entirely new – or incredibly old – monster to the world, but what they'd done, where they'd been, who they'd caught up with. Who'd lived through the last few years and who'd died.

It was a taste of a life he and Sam hadn't had since they'd been kids, he realised. Not even Ellen's roadhouse had given them the connections they'd needed, though they'd come to trust Ellen and Jo, Ash and Dwight more over the short time they'd known them than they'd managed with most other hunters. But it'd been his father's friends that had given him memories of normality in their non-normal upbringing. Jim's old house in Blue Earth. Caleb. Sitting on the porch in the late summer evenings, listening to his father talking, planning a hunt or just shooting the breeze on what they'd heard, or seen. Stripping the guns at the big kitchen table, the smell of oil and solvent all but drowning out Pastor Jim's loaves of bread baking in the oven, and talk of revenants and haunts and omens and curses. Working on a car at Bobby's, before his father had killed that friendship. Normal but not _normal_-normal, he thought. Their kind of normal.

In the last couple of years that'd gone completely. Just him and Sam, always on the move, trying to find the pieces that fit, trying to stay alive, no time to think, let alone work out what was happening to the people they'd once known, some of them maybe still out there. Even when they'd crashed at Bobby's, there wasn't time to chew over what'd happened, or get away from it, or think about anything else. It'd seemed like a bad joke, some of the time. He couldn't even catch a late-night movie on Bobby's ancient set because at some point he'd missed, late-night movies had been superseded by hour-long infomercials.

_Didn't you ever wonder how your mom's parents managed to be hunters and still raise a child?_

He hadn't. He'd been in their house, had eaten a meal with them, seen the strength of their love, only half-hidden in years-old familiarity, between his grandfather and grandmother, and still believed Mary Campbell when she'd told him she hated the life, dreamed of getting out, living a normal life with a husband and kids and a white picket fence. He hadn't looked at how or why or what'd happened because at the time, knowing what he'd known about her future, he'd been wishing for the same thing. For both of them. A normal life, far away from monsters and demons and things that came out of the dark and ripped lives to shreds, ripped away the things that he needed more than anything else.

The last couple of months, everything had just kept piling up _… the crappy hotel room had seemed like a fitting place for him to die in … Jo had been arguing with him but they'd both known he couldn't find the energy to fight against what she was there to do … despite the broken window, the sweetish pong of the gas had reached him, and he'd wondered then, just for a second, if she'd died in the explosion along with her mother …_

Shaking the memory off, he realised he still didn't know why he'd felt like that. He'd been wanting and needing at the time, but the job had still been there. He glanced down as Ellie finished her pruning, watching her get to her feet, tuck the full bags into her pack and turn toward him.

"Okay, all done," she said, and he saw her expression sharpen on him. "Let's go get a couple of pitchers of margaritas."

* * *

The taxi bumped over the trolley car tracks, turning from St Charlies down First and following Magazine under the expressway. Ellie glanced at the profile of the man sitting beside her, recognising the slightly drawn look as he stared at the quiet, dark streets of the central business district.

Something was itching in him, something that'd started his internal processing after they'd walked away from the Quarter and headed into the Garden District. She didn't think it'd been the reunion with Colette and Etienne, he'd seemed relaxed and enjoying himself then.

They didn't get any time to stop and evaluate, Ellie knew. Her knowledge of what they'd been doing over the last two and a half years was sketchy, mostly what other people thought they'd been doing, along with the occasional summarised version of an event or series of events from one or the other well after the fact. In that thin knowledge, it seemed to her like they'd spent most of the time on their feet, trying to keep doing their jobs while avoiding notice, the attention of those who wanted them dead – or just incapacitated enough to no longer be a threat.

The leviathan had gotten too much information from the angel. And Dean wasn't giving himself enough time to work his way through Cas' betrayals or his death. But, she thought, that wasn't the only thing churning away in the hunter. Sooner or later it would come spilling out. Dean could hold things inside for a long time but not forever, that innate sense of justice, of morality, made his guilt an acid that ate through him, forcing him into saying something, to get whatever it was out of his head.

He couldn't talk to his brother anymore. Not just on the big things either. A part and parcel of being too close, yet not close enough to be able to reveal their weakness to one other, both needing to be strong, to be able to back each other up. Dean had talked to Sam. Had told her in short, clipped sentences what the results of those conversations had been. He couldn't do it anymore, he'd said. Being vulnerable with Sam meant, somewhere down the line, under the influence of something, Sam would use those painful, uncertain confessions against him. Would twist what he'd said into something else, something that would hurt. He'd never admitted it out loud but Ellie knew that when it came to his brother, Dean had no armour. He'd trusted Sam with everything he had, everything he was, and that trust had been shattered, possibly beyond repair. Beyond Dean's ability to see a way to repair it, anyway, she realised.

The taxi stopped at the oyster bar and she got out, hearing the clunk of the door on the other side.

"Someplace quieter?" she asked as the taxi pulled away, looking down the street then back at him. The desire to party hard seemed to have gone from both of them.

Dean nodded. "There's a – a little place, down there," he said, gesturing vaguely down the street. "Got a small bar and a blues band."

Even in the middle of the night in the middle of the week, the street was full. The frenetic energy had dissipated but everyone smiled, waving their plastic cups of liquor as they wove their way from one side of the street to the other. Ellie slowed as she felt something press lightly against her permanent awareness of her surroundings. Not enough to ring bells, but enough to make her wonder if, once again, something was watching them. The feeling disappeared as Dean moved closer to her and they walked down the most famous street in the Quarter, her attention switching to the man walking beside her. He was a little bit tense, she thought. As if he were thinking about something he didn't want to think about – or, she considered, as if he was weighing up something.

The little bar was quieter, a hole in the wall converted from a paved back garden, the band playing achingly quiet songs from decades ago and the bartender's seamed and wrinkled ebony face smiling at them as they ordered their drinks. Dean led the way across the uneven paving to a small table in the corner, vines and ferns almost hiding them from the rest of the courtyard. A fat pillar candle in a glass jar provided a minimal amount of light, enough to see his face as they sat down and listened to the melancholy chords picked out and carried on the warm breeze.

"What's going on?" she asked, dumping her pack beside her chair and leaning her elbows on the table as she looked at him.

* * *

Dean looked around the courtyard and said, "Nothing."

She didn't say anything and he ducked his head, flicking a sideways glance at her, seeing that she was studying the candle between them. His discomfort grew as he realised he couldn't leave it at that. Couldn't lie straight out.

"I mean, nothing – major," he added, grimacing at the inadequacy of the words. "Just – I – uh – seems like a long time since I did this."

It wasn't quite a lie but it had nothing to do with his sense that he was somehow wasting this opportunity, to be honest. To be himself, free of the doubts that were circling at a distance, waiting to pounce.

He watched her nod slowly, her gaze remaining on the candle between them. She wasn't buying it and he couldn't blame her. He wouldn't've bought it either. It'd felt like this from the beginning, he realised, rubbing a hand over his face. As if they could feel the lies or omissions, the half-truths and prevarications. Most of the time he liked that. Wanted it. It was a reassurance to know that neither of them could really lie for shit to the other. Sometimes, it felt too much. Too close. He wasn't sure if he told her things because he wanted to, or because he couldn't help himself.

_Well, in that case, you should be able to see that I am ninety percent ... crap. I get rid of that, what then?_

Ducking his head as that memory returned, he looked around as the bartender put their drinks on the small table.

_You really want to die not knowing, Dean?_

He'd said yes. Had told Jo he did. He didn't know why he'd felt like that then and he hadn't gotten any clearer on it since, but it was eating at him, that feeling.

Despair was an old acquaintance. He knew the depths he was capable of, knew how it could sneak up and enfold him. One bad job. One more death. Too many triggers in his life. But when Jo's spirit had looked at him, standing outside the salt circle, he'd been drowning in something he'd never felt before, something he couldn't understand. Giving up – just laying down and wanting it to be over – that'd never been a part of him. He'd been tired, aching, desperate, reckless, cynical and had, many times, tried to weigh his life against a better prospect for others, for the world. But he'd never wanted to just … die.

Looking at the woman seated across from him, the candlelight gilding her skin and hair, he thought it was more fucking inexplicable than he'd realised. He'd done a helluva lot of thinking – about his life, about what he'd wanted and needed – and he'd thought, even when she hadn't been able to get back as quickly as she'd said she would, that he'd felt okay with a lot of things that'd been chewing through him. He'd felt guilty for lying to Sam but not for what he'd done. He'd been struggling with what'd happened to Cas, but not to the point where it'd affected his ability to do his job – or want something different in his life. And when his thoughts turned to her, to the way they were together, to seeing her smile … he couldn't imagine wanting to let go of it. It'd been a hard road to get to this point. Why'n hell would he want to give it up?

"There's something I didn't tell you," he blurted out, not aware that he was going to say the words until they were hanging in the air between them, almost like an accusation. "About that Egyptian thing."

She looked up at him, leaning back slightly. "What?"

Later, he would wonder why he hadn't the faintest warning tingle that it was a bad idea. He hadn't been looking at the events in Dearborn with a clear view, he acknowledged. He'd been thinking about it, going over and over it, from his internal perspective, wondering why, not thinking about how it would've been for anyone else if Sam hadn't banished the god in time.

And now, he tried to describe it from that same singular view, looking down at the table as he told her about the conversation with the spirit, the way he'd thought it'd felt, the way he hadn't done a damned thing to save himself.

"She asked me if I wanted to die and I was standing there, thinking that, yeah, I did."

He stopped talking, abruptly aware that there hadn't been a sound or movement from across the table.

* * *

"Ellie?"

Ellie picked up her glass, taking a sip of the tart lemon drink and swallowing it. As it slid down her throat, she shivered slightly, aware that it was only adding to the chill in her stomach.

"Ellie?"

Putting the glass down, she looked at him. "Yeah, I heard you. You wanted to die."

She couldn't help the dry flat tone of her voice as she said it. She'd tried to listen to him, carefully, tried not to let what he was saying affect her judgement or touch her personally. It hadn't worked all that well.

"Uh, well," Dean said, brows drawing together a little. "I mean, yeah, I did."

"I don't suppose you took a moment to think about what that would do to Sam?" Ellie asked him, staring down at her drink. "Or Bobby?"

_Or me_, she thought to herself, but couldn't bring herself to say that out loud.

There was an edge of defensiveness in his tone as he answered, "I – I wasn't thinking about anything much."

What she knew of him, the things she'd learned and the things she just somehow knew, protested. He didn't give up. He never gave up. Somewhere, far back beneath the waves of alternating shock and emotion that were pushing and shoving at her, something scratched, demanding attention. It was too distant and too weak to get through the images that were filling her mind's eye; images of nothing left to burn or bury; of Sam calling, or Bobby, their voices disbelieving and raw with pain; of him telling the spirit of Jo Harvelle that he wanted to go, go with her and feel no more. Images that were pounding at her and making it impossible to think straight, impossible to breathe.

Abruptly, she pushed her drink aside, ignoring the splash of the liquid over her hand, reaching blindly down for her pack and scraping the chair back over the rough paving stones. She didn't want to hear any more.

"That – no – I –" she said, yanking at the strap of the pack as she got to her feet, looking at him when the pack untangled itself from the chair legs and settled onto one shoulder. She stopped moving for a second and drew in a deep breath. "Why did you tell me that?"

He looked at her blankly. "I – uh – I wanted you to know it," he said after a second, his expression confused. "I thought you might, uh, know why –"

"Why would I want to know that you felt like checking out for good, Dean?" she asked him, leaning on the back of the skewed chair. "You think I want to know that what we've got – had – between us isn't worth living for? Or is this your way of trying to tell me that you – forget it," she cut herself off suddenly, looking at the door to the bar. "I can't talk about this now."

"Wh-what?" Dean stared at her. "That's not what I –"

Turning away, Ellie swallowed and hurried toward the exit. Was that he'd meant by 'mostly' trusting, she wondered? That he didn't trust in them? Or was it just that he'd realised that he'd rather let everything go, the good as well as the bad, in preference to the struggle?

She turned automatically right as she came out of the bar, walking fast back up Bourbon, ignoring the late-night revellers and the sax player on the corner, not even hearing the suggestive calling of two young men lounging against the side of another bar.

Shock had gone and been replaced by anger, a pounding litany in her head matching her slammed-down footsteps along the cracked pavement. _What about me_, it said, and she stopped by the corner, sucking in a deep breath at the self-pity and selfishness of that internal rage, shaking her head. He'd told her he'd been ashamed of giving up when Sam had gone into the cage. Told her he'd kept to his promise instead of looking for her and what he said he'd wanted. How much of that could be true considering he'd been seemingly ready to give it all up for good with no more push than an old friend and a few setbacks?

He hadn't felt this way when she'd been in South Dakota. That knowledge slid in under the anger and pricked at her. Cas had been dead, he'd been going in circles, but he hadn't wanted to die back then.

For a second, she wanted to turn around, go back to the bar and confront him, tell him that his lies were tearing her pieces. The impulse was so strong she'd taken a couple of steps back up the street before she forced herself to stop. What good would it do, she asked herself acerbically? What good could it do to demand an answer? She'd learned a long time ago to ignore what people said, and to watch what they did instead. Action was more truthful than words, no matter how sincerely words could be delivered at the time. The motivation that drove people to do things was more simple, more direct and every single time, more truthful. He'd told Jo he wanted to die. He'd waited for her to light the gas, not lifting a finger to save himself. That told her all she needed to know.

Turning back, she started to walk again, head tucked down against her chest, the backpack bumping familiarly against her back as she strode down the street.

* * *

At the table, Dean stared at the empty chair opposite him.

What the _hell_ had just happened?

He'd thought – he'd thought he was being honest, talking about it, telling her about it. He'd thought, he realised slowly, that she'd listen, with that sometimes maddening calm objectivity she had, and take him through why it'd happened, why he'd felt like that.

He'd thought wrong.

Tossing back the inch of whiskey left in his glass, he slapped a twenty on the table and got to his feet. He wasn't sure if what he was feeling was pissed that she hadn't heard him out, or worried that through some mysterious alchemical something he'd missed, she was angry enough to leave. Maybe for good.

The bartender nodded at him, giving him a wry, knowing smile as he walked past and he ducked his head. He didn't need reminders that when it came to actual relationships, he wasn't exactly rolling in experience.

The street was still jumping, people walking and drinking, listening to the live bands and coming and going from the late-night restaurants, clustered in groups or strolling arm-in-arm. He couldn't see Ellie in either direction.

The hotel was about ten blocks, south-east and he started walking, the evening replaying in his head, mainly the high points – or low points, he thought, depending on which way you wanted to classify them.

Seeing Colette again, just being with people who knew him, knew his life, even if only in small chunks, had been unsettling and comforting, both at the same time. He still wasn't sure how it'd made him feel. He'd wanted to tell Sam about it, had wanted Sam to be there, see for himself, he thought, his stride slowing down as that knowledge intruded. For too long they'd been running, sometimes in the same place, but always running. From each other. From the angels, or demons, or just from the idea that anything good could come from a life that demanded so much and offered so little in the way of peace in return.

He knew, at the back of his mind, on some kind of academic level, that not all the people in their life lived like that. A lot did. Rufus had, but Rufus'd had a family, a wife he'd hunted with for years, a daughter. Both had been lost, but the daughter's death hadn't come from a monster, he remembered Bobby telling him, it'd been a guy, probably not exactly human but not what they hunted. Shit happened, even to regular people. And Rufus had told him that he'd had years with his family. Years of contentment in what he did and the home they'd created.

_I don't suppose you took a moment to think about what that would do to Sam? Or Bobby?_

The sharp-edged question came back and this time he heard the omission in it. He'd told her the truth, thinking hadn't been on the agenda much from the moment the god'd pronounced his judgement to the moment Sam had stuck him with the ram's horn, and for the first time he wondered why. If Sam hadn't been in time, there wouldn't have been enough left from the explosion to burn or bury. How would his brother have dealt with that? How would the old man? They'd died a lot of times, but they'd always come back, somehow, usually not in a good way. But he'd gotten the impression from Jo that if she took him out, that would be the end. And again, he'd've left his brother alone.

And Bobby would've had to tell Ellie.

He stopped on the street, eyes screwing shut as he realised why she'd been so angry, too angry to even talk about it.

_I heard you. You wanted to die._

The fuck had he been thinking, just saying it like that, not even giving the slightest consideration to how that would make her feel, he asked himself caustically? How would he've felt, finding out the same thing, knowing she hadn't cared enough about him to want to keep living?

Fuck, it was all screwed up. It hadn't been that way, he hadn't been thinking of anyone except that the load was too damned heavy and he couldn't carry it any longer.

He started to walk faster, thinking he could get to the hotel, make her listen, make her understand that he hadn't wanted to give up on _her_, or them … then he slowed again, wondering if he could.

It'd been like … like a black fog, he thought, remembering the door to the room closing, Sam's bootsteps fading away, turning around and telling Jo she could come out. He'd stood in the circle of salt and looked at her, and his mind had filled with grey-tinged images – his father, lying on the floor of the hospital room; Sam's body, rigor come and gone, flaccid and unmoving on the mattress in a derelict house in a ghost town; Ash's arm, blackened but the watch still recognisable; Pamela, bleeding out in some skeevy motel room, her burned-out eyes rolling up as she died; Jo's hands, plastered over her abdomen, and Ellen's eyes, too bright, her voice too brittle, trying to convince herself that she wasn't watching her daughter die; Sam diving into a hole in the ground and the creaking groan of the earth closing over him. Images that had flicked past his mind's eye, faster and faster, holding no hope, no possibility of a better ending, nothing but pain and a feeling of futility he hadn't been able to fight against. And the guilt for all of it, smothering him, drowning him. For his father and for Sam, for Ash and Pamela, for Jo and Ellen and all the people he hadn't been able to save, for the ones where he'd been too slow, not strong enough.

Stopping at the corner of Decatur, he blinked as another memory returned, bright and sharp.

"_Seriously, are you still having nightmares about Jess?" _he'd asked, looking at the shadows that were standing out under his brother's eyes. Sam hadn't been sleeping for weeks. He'd been worried and he hadn't been able to figure out a way to get him to get any of it out.

"_Yeah," _Sam'd admitted._ "But it's not just her. It's everything. I just forgot, you know? This job. Man, it gets to you."_

_"You can't let it," _he remembered saying, hundred percent certainty in his voice._ "You can't bring it home like that."_

How'd he gone from that cocksure guy with an answer for everything to thinking the world was sitting on his shoulders? Where'd all that guilt come from? For not saving enough people? For not being good enough? No one could save everyone, no matter what they did or how hard they tried. His father had told him that, in the aftermath of a hunt that had gone seriously wrong. Bobby had said it to him too, more than once.

Rubbing a hand over his forehead, he wondered what the hell had happened to him in the last couple of years that had made him believe giving up was a possible choice. He'd never given up on anything or anyone in his life. He'd made mistakes, fuck, made plenty of them, but the only time he'd really given up had been after thirty years on the rack. That was the mistake he couldn't take back, couldn't make up for, but he'd come to grips with it in the last few months. A bit, anyway. Had come to realise that even if he couldn't be the man he'd hoped he'd be, had wanted to be, he wasn't a worthless piece of shit on someone's shoe either.

Starting to walk again, there was an uncomfortable hiccup of doubt in his gut about that thought, hitting him out of the blue. He'd done the best he could, she'd told him, more than once, and if it wasn't the best he'd been hoping for, it still wasn't nothing. He hadn't realised he'd allowed himself that much.

Picking up his pace again, he thought he could probably figure out a way to explain. That … despair … that fog … it hadn't been how he'd felt before they'd hit Dearborn, and it'd gone after they'd left. He didn't know why the failures had landed on him so hard there, or the way he'd felt when he'd heard what the earlier victims had done, but it was done. Over.

Ahead, the discreetly lit sign of the hotel showed between the low-hanging branches of the trees lining the street and he accelerated again, forcibly keeping himself to a fast walk through the lobby and up the stairs.

The room was empty and dark when he pushed the door open. He flicked on the lights and gave the space a cursory glance, swearing softly under his breath when he realised she'd gone someplace else.

Standing indecisively by the door for a moment, he wondered where. There were a few of the really big hotels, on Jackson Square, or on the other side of it. More downtown. If she'd meant what she said about not wanting to talk, she could've gone to any one of them. He pulled his phone out, hitting the speed dial without looking and listening to the recorded voice advising him to leave a message, ending the call without doing so and putting the phone back in his pocket.

In the still air of the closed-up room, her scent lingered, from the sheets, from the bath and the half-open canvas bag lying on the floor near the foot of the bed. He closed his eyes. It'd just never occurred to him that she'd see it differently from the way he had. An aberration. A-a – a moment out of his life, not a part of him. Sure as hell, he hadn't imagined she'd look at what had nearly happened – what could've happened, he admitted a little unwillingly to himself – and see down the line that bit further to the aftermath.

_Why would I want to know that you felt like checking out for good, Dean? You think I want to know that what we've got – had – between us isn't worth living for? Or is this your way of trying to tell me that you – forget it._

She teased him sometimes that he was the world's slowest processor of information. He was, he didn't mind admitting to it. If it was something that needed a decision, or action, he could calculate the odds and come up with some sort of a plan in seconds. But, when it came to sorting through his emotions, or a situation that involved someone's emotions, or their thoughts on something, he needed time and he needed space to get through it. Sam'd questioned everything when they'd first been riding together again, after Jess' death. And he'd spent days – hell, _weeks_ – thinking through the implications, the consequences, the ramifications of his brother's questioning, his thoughts and opinions on what was happening, what'd happened when they'd been looking for their father.

He let out a soft groan as he realised what she'd thought he was saying – what she'd thought he'd meant by telling her in the first place.

Swinging around, he left the lights on and pulled the door closed behind him, striding down the hallway and deciding to backtrack to the bar, then try the hotels over on Jackson.

* * *

Ellie looked around and scowled as she realised she'd let her feet bring her automatically to the hotel's street. She stood on the pavement, lower lip caught between her teeth in indecision. She didn't want to talk to Dean yet. The anger was dissipating but she knew herself well enough to know that one poorly phrased comment, or a misunderstanding, would trigger it again. She needed time to herself to work through the reactions. She wouldn't get that time if she went back to the hotel.

She could grab a room at the Place over at the Square, she thought, turning around and starting back down the street. Take some time, think about it. Deal with it, she guessed. If they were booked out, there was a Marriott further upriver.

Maybe she didn't know everything he'd been through, she considered as she headed north. Maybe he hadn't told her everything that'd happened, or what he'd thought about it. Maybe there'd been worse things, things he couldn't talk about.

She hadn't been around when Cas had been taken over by the Leviathan. _When have you ever been around when he's really needed someone_, a voice in her head questioned tartly?

Tucking her chin against her chest, she acknowledged the accusation. It wasn't an especially fair one, but it was true. She hadn't wanted to be somewhere else, but she had been.

_So maybe, just maybe, he might've wondered if you'd be coming back this time, as well?_

He'd said that the god had condemned him on his guilt, she thought, trying to ignore the truth of that small voice that seemed to know exactly where her weak spots were. Guilt over leaving Jo and Ellen to die, even though it'd been the only way. Guilt over dragging Sam back into the life, when he'd thought his little brother had been out. Guilt over lying to Sam about killing the kitsune, who Sam had said had been a friend. Someone he'd trusted.

There were other guilts in him, she knew. Deeper ones. Older ones. Why hadn't Osiris brought forth the spirit of John Winchester if he'd really wanted to tear Dean apart with guilt and despair? He was still conflicted by his feelings about his father, the love that had been a bedrock of his life warring with the things he'd learned since John had died.

She turned over the things he'd told her before about the so-called trial. He'd felt guilty about pulling Sam back in, but he hadn't done that. They'd all known that Sam had been the bait for the trap for Dean. Had he felt guilty about being so easy to manipulate through his family? Or had the god been rummaging through his mind, and had picked out the things that'd been on the surface, simple to see, simple to use?

It wasn't easy – for either of them – this life that she'd chosen and he'd had chosen for him. But, she had a sneaking suspicion that they made it harder than it needed to be as well. Or maybe that was something she did, and something he had to live with?

The thought brought her to an abrupt halt and she looked around, seeing the brightly-lit hotel on the other side of the park and wondering if she was making the wrong decision about staying away.

"Got any spare change, missy?"

The voice came from the bench, a few feet into the park from her. The man sitting there might've been old or young. Under the layers of grey dirt and mismatched clothing it was hard to tell. Stringy blond hair fell over his forehead and pale blue eyes watched her blearily, their focus suggesting that the guy was loaded and feeling no pain. Digging distractedly in the pack, she pulled out her wallet and handed him a ten.

"Thank you, miss, I –" he started to say, looking up at her, and then past her, his eyes widening.

Ellie turned around and felt her stomach drop abruptly.

They never really looked like normal people, even if they'd just fed. Their skin was too polished and too pale, their eyes were too bright, too filled with avarice and knowledge to mistake for anything human. The man was tall and slender, dark-haired with brilliant topaz-coloured eyes. The woman was a little shorter, lusciously voluptuous, her midnight-blue silk dress straining around the curves of her body, honey-blonde hair gathered in a loose and artless roll on the top of her head. Her eyes were dark, brown or blue, framed in thick, long lashes.

And they were old, she thought, barely able to keep the man in sight as he seemed to flicker through the shadows around her. The woman walked toward her with a casual deliberation. Older than she'd come across for years.

"Graveyard dirt," a whisper in her ear, an exhale against the side of her neck. She smelled the scent, rotting flowers and decomposing meat, ducking her head a little as it enveloped her and the vampire's hands clenched around her shoulders, holding her there as if in a pair of vices. "And … yarrow, I believe."

"Are you a witch then?" the woman asked her, lifting her chin with a cool hand, nostrils flaring as she leaned close. "A little queen-bee of the local hoodoo community?"

The man's hands slid down the outside of her arms, then under them, pulling her hips back against himself.

"Not a witch," he murmured, looking over Ellie's shoulder at the woman, and pulling down the edge of her dress. "Not with scars like these."

"A hunter?" the woman scoffed, running her eyes up and down Ellie. "Surely not."

No machete. No flares. Nothing she could use immediately that would overpower them or help her get away from them. Ellie tensed herself as the man's hands moved familiarly over her.

"We'll take her back," he said, drawing in another deep breath beside her neck. "The Master will want to see what is hunting in his backyard."

"Even if she is," the woman protested, her tone peevish. "How much of a threat could she be? She's probably here on vacation, nothing to do with us. And I'm hungry, Simon."

Ellie felt his hands tighen around her hips, stumbling a little as she was pulled back, away from the woman.

"Don't be ridiculous," Simon said. "We don't disobey. And you ate less than an hour ago," he added, twisting Ellie around to wrap an arm around her shoulders.

It felt like a steel band, Ellie thought, forced into walking alongside him, her backpack left on the ground next to the drunk's bench. She moved away a little and he tightened his grip, dropping his head to laugh softly against her cheek.

"No escape attempts and you'll live a little bit longer."

Behind her, she heard the clicking of the woman's heels on the pavement.

When she'd gone after her first vampire, in Boston at the age of seventeen, she'd thought she'd known what she'd been up against. She'd been wrong. That one had been very old, Michael had told when she'd come back to consciousness. Old enough to hide in the beams of moonlight that'd filled the warehouse. Old enough to use illusions and deflections to move almost invisibly, even in the day's sunshine. It'd been so fast she'd never seen it. And when it had held her, for a split-second, tasting her blood, it'd felt she'd been encased in concrete, unable to move a muscle.

These weren't as old as that one, she decided as they stopped beside an old-fashioned gleaming black Daimler, parked in the shadows. But they were faster and stronger and she wouldn't get away from both.

_Sometimes, you have to go along with something that seems like a bad idea, because sooner or later a better opportunity will come up_. Michael's voice, still reminding her of his knowledge, years after his death. He was right. Something better would come up, she told herself, bending as Simon opened the door and pushed her inside. She barely had time to clear the car's doorframe before he was inside with her, pushing her down and keeping his arm tight over her shoulders.

The blonde got into the driver's seat and started the engine.

Dean was gonna be pissed, Ellie thought, watching out the window for their route. She hadn't been concentrating on her surroundings, or she might've felt some kind of warning that the monsters were there. She'd been wallowing in her damned, mixed up feelings and had been taken like an amateur.

* * *

The foot traffic had disappeared almost completely once he'd walked up Bourbon for the second time and turned down St Ann. Under the big, old trees, the streets were dappled in black and white and pale gold, the streetlights failing to compete effectively with the huge canopies, their light spilling in pools here and there, but leaving pockets of blackness alongside most of the buildings.

His bootheels clocked on the uneven sidewalks, too loud to his ears without the relentless hum of traffic in the background. For the middle of a major metropolis, the city was truly quiet and the night air was warm and silky against his skin, filled with the scents of the early blooms cascading over walls and balconies, crammed into tiny walled gardens.

No one had seen or noticed Ellie on Bourbon, and he was heading for Jackson Square. He hadn't expected to get lucky that quickly anyway.

A flash of memory, sitting in an aboveground mausoleum with Annie, zombies prowling the cemetery outside and a lotta hours before dawn. He remembered Ellie telling him she'd talked to Annie, recently, he thought, and shook his head. Annie wouldn't've left any details. It'd been an eye-opening experience for him and they'd stayed friends, catching up when it was possible. Ellie didn't seem to worry about what he'd done with other women. Didn't seem to be affected by it at all, he considered, remembering her comment about Laney.

He couldn't work out if he was comfortable with that or not. When she'd mentioned hunting the levis with someone else, he'd felt an instant and not-at-all-welcomed stab at the thought, not looking at where it'd come from or what it'd meant. He'd felt a flash of jealousy when Ben had tricked him into going back to Battle Creek, only to find Lisa dressed up and ready for a date, but it'd had gone as quickly as it'd appeared, snuffed out by the realisation that he wasn't jealous of her seeing another guy. He'd been feeling sorry for himself that nothing he'd wanted had lasted.

He crossed Chartres and slowed as he approached the park. There was the hotel he remembered, on the other side. It wasn't a flash, new place. She didn't like the big hotels all that much, preferring smaller ones with character. He could start there, he thought.

Walking between two parked cars and stepping onto the pavement, he frowned as he saw the guy on the bench and the pack in his hands.

"Hey, where'd you get that?!" he demanded, crossing the pavement and yanking the leather backpack from the drunk. "Where'd you get this?!"

The guy cowered back against the bench, pushing his hair back from his face with a trembling hand.

"I didn't steal it!" he said. "She left it here – honest!"

"Where'd she go?"

"That – uh – Quicksilver," the drunk said, gesturing vaguely down toward the river. "Him and the Beauty, they took her away."

"What?"

"They were here," the man repeated. "Waiting, like always. They don't want me, too used, he said. But they wanted her."

Fuck, Dean thought, wondering how he was going to get helpful information out of the guy who smelled like Bobby's cheapest rotgut.

"What'd he look like, this, uh, guy?"

"Bright. All bright."

_Bright_, Dean repeated to himself, wondering what the hell that meant. "His name was, uh, Quicksilver?"

"No."

"No?"

"That's what I calls him," the man told him. "'Cause he's so fast you can't see him hardly."

Dean felt his stomach lurch and drop. "Fast – and bright," he repeated. "And, uh, pale? White skin?"

"Yeah, like snow."

Fast, bright and white. It didn't leave many on the list. "There were two of them?"

"Man and a woman, so beautiful," the drunk said. "The lady, she was giving me some money, and they were there. In the dark."

"What happened?" he asked, feeling himself clench up. Against two, she wouldn't have stood a chance. She would've known that, he thought. Would'nt've fought.

"The woman, she said she was hungry, but the man, he pulled the lady away, said they had to go to their master."

For a second, Dean froze, back in the twilit hall, the foetid breath of the wild-haired fang gusting over his face. _And around and around we go_ … he'd been turned but that'd been their mistake, giving him all that juice, enough to take out the entire nest on his own. An involuntary shudder slid through him when he remembered the dreams that had filled his mind as the blood had infiltrated his body; the face in them, cold and ancient and uncaring. _A little rusty on our Dante, boys?_ Was that the 'master' they'd been talking about, or someone more local, less high up?

"Then what?"

"They walked away, down there, took the lady." The hand waved down the street again, toward the café.

"They get into a car?"

"Yessir, a big, black car."

Well, that was helpful, Dean thought. Not so much. "D'you see the kind of car?"

"Rich man's car," the drunk said. "One of those foreign cars, all hood and low to the ground."

"Like a Jag?"

The guy shook his head. "Bigger. Older man's car. Y'know, like it comes with a chauffeur."

That put an entirely different image into his head. "Like a Rolls? Or a Bentley?"

"Like them."

"What'd you take from the bag?" he asked, looking at the open top flap.

The guy slid a little further away on the seat. "Nuthin'. Didn't take nuthin'. Lady gave me money. I thought I could find someone to tell – about what happened."

He wasn't sure he believed that, but he figured he could give him the benefit of the doubt, turning away.

A big, black, foreign car. It would have to stand out in this city.

He looked down at the bag in his hand and repressed a shiver at the sight of it separated from the woman who carried it everywhere. The city, the state, had always been a haven for them. Crowded and warm and with a mixed heritage found nowhere else, even the old boneyards cooperated in the needs of the vampire, all aboveground tombs, the river and the lake too close for underground burials.

In Limestone, the fang in charge had turned him straight away. He gotten the impression that all the new victims were turned as soon as they were captured. He swore softly as he looked down the empty and silent road. He didn't have any time.


	6. Chapter 6 Dance in Darkness

**Chapter 6 Dance in Darkness**

* * *

_**Outside New Orleans**_

The car rolled over the narrow asphalt road almost silently, its suspension soft enough to barely feel the rough patches of the county route, headlights creating ghosts from the Spanish moss that hung in swagged curtains along the spreading branches of the trees to either side.

They'd passed out of the city limits ten minutes ago, Ellie thought, heading slightly east of north. A huge and bilious moon tracked them, shedding gold-tinged light across the open marshes and leaving stygian shadows beneath the crowding forest that buckled the shoulders.

"Home, sweet home," the vampire beside her murmured quietly, and she turned her head.

To the left, massive brick columns were flanked by a pair of ancient oaks, the moss almost concealing the gateway in a delicate silvery shroud. She heard the faint hiss as the car drove under and through it, strands brushing over the roof and along the sides, catching a glimpse of heavy, wrought-iron gates standing open as they passed through. The rumble of the tyres changed to a crackle when they rolled onto the gravelled drive, the car bumping slightly over the uneven surface. The vampire driving switched the headlights off, and beneath the thick canopies of the trees lining the road, Ellie's eyes strained to pick out any detail in the complete blackness.

The car turned and the trees drew back, moonlight lighting up another curve and the big square house ahead of them, picking out the formal gardens and the smooth silver surface of a lake to one side.

She couldn't see any lights at the house, but that meant little. Vampires could see perfectly in the dark and most preferred it, particularly the older ones. Gravel popped and crunched under the tyres as the car pulled into the turnaround at the front of the broad portico and Simon's hand closed hard around her upper arm, dragging her out with him when he opened the door.

Climbing the steps beside him, Ellie looked around, trying to get as much detail as she could of the size and shape of the building. The front doors opened as they approached, and in the dimness of the front hall, she saw the two holding them, tall and heavily built men in some kind of formal livery, the crisp brightness of the white jackets in strong contrast to the ebony gleam of their skin. Their eyes lacked the vivid brightness of vampires, she thought, the corneas grey-tinged. She heard the clack-clack of the door's locks and bolts as they closed behind her.

"This way," Simon said, the vice grip on her arm pushing to the right, and through a set of double doors. Ellie stumbled slightly, gauging the vampire's strength as he yanked her upright. She had a single weapon on her, a small silver knife which, she acknowledged wryly, was not going to do much unless the situation was exceptionally promising. As she walked into the next room and looked around, she realised that would be an even longer shot than she'd thought.

To either side of the vast room, cages had been built of cold iron. There were a dozen of them, she counted, her gaze flicking from side to side, each one holding three or four people, young men and women. Fledglings, she corrected herself as Simon pushed her down the centre aisle, and she saw the glitter of their eyes, and the paleness of their skin. In each of the cells, plastic blood bags hung deflated and empty from the bars, the newly-made vampires turning listlessly at first as they walked by, then running to the bars, mouths opening and fangs descending as they caught her scent – or the beat of her heart, she considered, arms reaching through, long nails tipping the fingers stretched out for her.

"Imagine if we just tied you up in here and opened the doors," Simon said softly, his head bowed beside hers. "They would tear you to pieces for your precious, living blood."

Ellie ignored the threat, and felt the vampire's chuckle against the side of her neck. Walking ahead of them, the blonde vampire waved a languid hand at the two men standing by the doors at the other end of the room and they opened them. They were full vampires, Ellie filed away the information as she glanced at them. Recently fed, judging by the colour in their faces. Neither looked more than thirty.

The hallway beyond was broad and floored in marble tiles, and their footsteps were loud in the silence of the house. The blonde stopped in front of another door, and knocked on it.

There might've been a response from the other side, but Ellie couldn't hear it. The blonde opened the door and Simon changed his grip on her, pushing her ahead of him into the room.

Unlike the rest of the house, this room was lit. Hundred of candles, set into the cups of the old chandelier in the middle of the room, in glass jars on the circular table beneath it, in elaborate candelabra on the desk and occasional tables and on the mantle that spanned a wide, deep hearth on one wall, filled the room with a gentle golden glow, the flames rock-steady.

Next to the fireplace, two men stood, heads turning to watch them enter. Ellie glanced at them and around the room, seeing another two of the liveried servants standing discreetly behind the door and by the window. She looked back at the two by the cold hearth, and felt her heart sink.

The man on the left was of medium height and a heavy build; swarthy, deep olive-toned skin, black hair and dark eyes, and a cold, calculating expression on his face as his gaze skimmed over her. She saw his expression change slightly, a faint frown drawing his brows together as he seemed to study her. The regard was unnerving, the man looking like he thought he knew her, or should know her. She didn't recognise anything about him, other than the unmistakable stance of a predator. Forcing herself to look away, she turned her gaze to the man standing beside him.

Also of medium height, with a powerful build disguised by the exquisite tailoring of the suit he wore, that was where the similarity between the two ended. Ellie felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise sharply. This was the man she'd been brought to, she thought. Another predator, perhaps older. More cunning, she felt, fighting an atavistic urge to break and run.

Pale honey-toned irises were startling against coffee-brown skin and Ellie looked into them involuntarily, her muscles twitching and spasming as she felt the hypnotic power of the ancient vampire slip into her mind, felt her memories dragged out and rippled through at speed.

_Tragedy. Destiny thwarted. Determination. Strength. Sacrifice. Love … and for one who was almost my own … oh, child, you will be mine._

She flinched back from the invasive thoughts, and felt the vampire withdraw, seeing the fleshy lips lift for a second as he recognised the revulsion. His gaze shifted to Simon, and he nodded slightly, then turned back to the other man.

Simon pushed her toward the desk, pulling her hands behind her. The cold touch of metal circled her wrists before she realised what he was doing, the handcuffs' locks clicking shut before she'd reached the desk.

"We're in agreement then?" the swarthy man asked and the ancient vampire inclined his head.

"There are six billion of them, enough for all," he said, his voice cultured and deep. "You may tell your leader that I am in favour of organisation and a mutually satisfying arrangement, Edgar."

"Good." Edgar glanced at Ellie and the vampires to either side of her briefly, then nodded. "We'll keep you informed of our progress, of course."

"Of course."

Ellie watched Edgar turn away and stride out of the room. She couldn't shake the feeling that he'd known her. Belatedly, she replayed their conversation in her mind and realised there was only one thing he could be.

"A nice catch, Simon," the old vampire said, as the door closed behind Edgar, and he turned to walk across the room.

In her peripheral vision, she caught Simon's smirk at the blonde, dropping her gaze to the floor as their master stopped in front of her.

_The older a vampire gets, the more powerful they become_. Michael's voice filled her mind and she forced herself to remain still as the vampire's hand touched her chin, the softness of its skin belying the enormous strength she could feel through its fingers when the grip tightened and it lifted her head. _Physically and mentally_, Michael's advice continued. _They are faster than the eye can register, able to weave illusions and cloud the mind. They can look into our minds and into our thoughts and memories. But you can beat it. You can shut them out._

She kept her eyes closed as her chin was lifted, frantically searching her memories for something meaningless to barricade her thoughts with. The nonsense rhyme came to her as she felt her lids lifting on their own.

_The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day. I sat there with Sally, we sat there, we two, and I said, 'How I wish we had something to do!' Too wet to go out, and too cold to play ball. So we sat in the house. We did nothing at all. So all we could do was to sit! Sit! Sit! Sit! And we did not like it, not one little bit._

The vampire leaned closer, staring into her eyes and she stared helplessly back, unable to close her eyes. Her lips thinned as she kept the rhyme looping, faster, and over and over again, hitting the words more strongly as she felt the inexorable press of the mind pushing at her.

_The sun did not SHINE it was too WET to play. So we SAT in the house all that cold, COLD, wet day. I sat THERE with Sally, WE sat there, we two, and I SAID! 'How I WISH we had SOMETHING to do!' too wet to GO out and TOO cold to play BALL so we sat in the HOUSE we did NOTHING at ALL so all we COULD DO was to sit! SIT! _SIT!_ – _

The vampire chuckled, letting go of her jaw and stepping back, his head inclined in acknowledgement. "Very clever. But you won't be able to keep that up."

* * *

_**Irish Channel, New Orleans.**_

Dean hit the brakes as he saw the number of the narrow shotgun house, swerving into the kerb and killing the engine. He got out and ran up the steps to the door, pounding his fist against it. Behind the etched glass panels, the hall lights came on and he saw shadows moving. The door opened and Michel stood there, in a tee shirt and boxers, brows shooting up.

"Vamps got Ellie," Dean snapped out and the older man stepped aside to let him in.

"When?"

"No more'n an hour ago," Dean said, following Michel down the narrow hallway. "Is Etienne still with you?"

"_Oui_, yes." Michel stopped, gesturing the hunter toward the back of the house as footsteps thumped down the stairs and he turned to look behind him. "The back room, Dean."

"What is it?" Colette asked, belting a robe around her as she came down the last couple of steps and around the banister, her gaze switching from her husband to the hunter. "Dean?"

"Vampire," Michel said. He looked past her to her uncle as Denis came down the stairs after her. Twenty years older than his niece, he was a lean man, hard and muscular. A smuggler, he was the one who made the trips between Haiti and Louisiana, on an old fishing boat that never seemed to attract anyone's attention. "Denis, call Paul and Maurice. _Vite_."

Nodding, Denis turned into the living room doorway and headed for the phone.

"You didn't hear about a nest around here?" Dean asked as Michel and Colette walked in to the screened back room behind the kitchen. Long and narrow, it held two walls of shelving, filled with books and artefacts, and a number of chests of drawers along the third wall. A long cypress table took up the centre of the room, low-hanging overhead lights illuminating its surface.

"No, no kills have been found around here," Colette said, looking from Michel to Dean. "I will wake Etienne."

Dean curbed his impatience, watching her go. The houngan was his only chance of finding Ellie quickly.

"There were some missing persons cases, a few months ago," Michel added, getting a map from a chest of shallow drawers and spreading it over the table. "The police concluded that they were runaways –"

A prickle of familiarity hit Dean as he looked at the older man, subduing the anxiety briefly. "Late teens? Early twenties? Disappeared from clubs?"

Michel nodded. "There was some concern that they were abductions –"

"They were," Dean cut him off certainly, his mind's eye filled with the vapid faces of the young fledglings he'd seen in Limestone. "We ran into a new kind of nest, last year. Vamps were turning young guys and girls and sending them out to collect more. A lot of them were eager to buy into the fantasy of turning into fangs."

Michel looked at him, brows shooting up. "What?"

"Yeah." Dean shook his head. "They found the reality a bit different from the movies but by then it was too late."

"How many were in that nest?"

Dean looked at him. "Thirty four."

"_Merde_."

"Yeah." He sucked in a breath. "Michel, when they picked someone, they turned them straight away."

He saw the man's face lose expression, the muscle at the corner of his jaw jumping as the implications registered, saw that Michel understood what he meant.

The door to the kitchen opened and they both turned to look at the houngan as he came in, arms full of bowls, ingredients and implements which he set down at the end of the table.

"What happened?" Etienne asked, looking at Dean.

"Pretty sure Ellie's been taken by at least two vampires," Dean said.

"Did you see them?" Colette asked, moving to houngan's side and helping to sort through the equipment he needed.

"Uh, no." He looked away. "There was a, uh, a witness, said that they were pale, and fast and bright."

"They are not in the city," Etienne said, spreading a cloth over the end of the table and setting out candles. "We would have felt them, or seen them. But they cannot be that distant either."

"Can you, uh, use a location spell?" Dean asked, looking down at the map.

"Do you have something of hers?"

He nodded, pulling out a wrapped bundle from his coat pocket. He'd gone back to the hotel room immediately, grabbing a shirt from her bag, her hairbrush and toothbrush and wrapping them in a handtowel. Handing them to Colette, he watched her unwrap them carefully, using a fine-bladed knife to tease the strands of hair from the brush, slice off a few of the bristles from the tooth brush and cut a piece of fabric from the shirt.

"I must speak with the _loa_," Etienne said, his concentration focused on the altar he was preparing. "Colette, I need offerings and then you will all go."

Colette went to the kitchen, gathering bottles of wine, fruit, vegetables, bunches of dried herbs and returning to give them to the houngan. She gestured to Dean as Michel left the room, and he followed her out reluctantly, glancing over his shoulder, then pulling the door closed behind him.

"It won't take long," Michel told him. "Etienne is highly favoured."

"Sit down," Colette added, going to the stove and lifting the kettle there before she turned on the burner. "Nothing is successful on an empty stomach." She turned and looked at Dean. "You will not be effective running on your nerves alone."

* * *

There was a knock at the front door and they heard it open, voices echoing down the hall. A moment later, Denis came into the kitchen, followed by two other men.

"Dean, you remember my brothers? Paul and Maurice," Colette said, lifting the boiling water off the stove and pouring it into a pan filled with ground coffee. "They will help us tonight."

Dean got to his feet as the younger, Paul, held out his hand. He shook it, feeling the strength in the grip. He remembered a lot of Colette's widespread family, coming and going from the old house when he'd been there. He hadn't spent a lot of time with her brothers, but Paul gave him a piercing stare now, nodding slightly.

"Michel, keep an eye on the coffee," Colette said to her husband, walking for the door. "I have to get dressed."

"We brought it all," Maurice said to Denis. "Comms, ops and a couple of nasty surprises. It's good to see you again, Dean."

He turned to Dean and offered a broad, calloused hand and Dean looked at Denis, one brow rising questioningly as he asked, "Ops?"

"Maurice is with the Thirty-Ninth," Denis said by way of explanation, walking around the table to pull out a chair. "If the nest is large, we'll need more than machetes."

"The – uh – the witness said something about a 'master'," Dean told them as the men settled themselves at the table. "That might have been referring to the nest leader, or it could mean something worse."

"Worse?" Denis looked up at him.

"There's an Alpha vampire," Dean said, ducking his head as he leaned on a chair back. "The first one."

"Well, there are legends of such things. Those the Dark Mother made first –" Michel said, his brow furrowing as he looked at the others.

"This ain't no legend," Dean told him tersely. "First fang, first werewolf, first skinwalker –"

"The children of the Mother of All," Maurice interrupted, one side of his mouth quirking up. "Usiku and Raat. Yenaaldlooshi. Manitouwa and Kānāphūsī and Baccedanava?" He shook his head, getting up to turn the burner off under the coffee pot. "The lore is world-wide, in every culture."

"And every culture has its tales of their mother –"

"Yeah, well, she's dead, and so're a couple of her kids," Dean cut him off impatiently. "But some aren't."

"And you came across this information, how?" Paul asked, taking a cup of dark coffee from his brother.

Dean ducked his head, his breath whistling in between his teeth as he considered the pros and cons of telling them about Eve and Crowley. His sense of time, running out for Ellie, pressed hard as he looked up again.

"You're gunna have to trust me on this."

Michel passed him a cup of coffee. "But you don't know that this firstborn is here, not for sure."

Taking the cup, Dean straightened a little. "No, not for sure."

"Did you bring the flares?" Colette asked as she came back into the room, her long dark hair wound into a tight knot at the nape of her neck, wearing a close-fitting black shirt and black cargo pants tucked into laced black boots. She no longer looked much like a Creole wife and mother, Dean thought. More like a mercenary.

"Yeah, we brought them." Maurice sat down at the table and Colette moved to the counter, taking a loaf of bread and beginning to slice it.

"Everyone eats," she said, piling the slices onto a plate and setting it on the table along with crocks of butter and soft cheese.

The door to the back room opened as she placed plates of spiced sausage and sliced tomato and onions and ham in front of the hunters, and everyone paused to look around at the houngan.

"I found her, and yes, it is a nest," Etienne said, wiping his face with a silk cloth. "Out of the city –"

Dean got to his feet. "Let's go."

"No," Colette said, crossing her arms over her chest. "First, eat. Then we will plan. Then we will go."

Dean shook his head, his voice rising with frustration. "We don't have that much time!"

"We don't have the time to get it wrong, Dean," Michel countered, taking another slice of bread from the plate. "If you are right, and there is a powerful vampire in there, we need to make sure this is _exactement_. Precise, yes?"

The others were studying their plates, and Dean turned away, his expression screwing up for a second.

_Because soon, I'll be ankle deep in your blood sucking the marrow from your bones._

The smooth, uncaring voice of the Alpha came back to him and he sucked in a breath. There wasn't any chance of him getting Ellie back if he tried to take that sonofabitch on his own. He turned back to the table.

"Thought you were sticking to the supply business," he said to Michel, almost accusingly

"We were," Michel said with a shrug. "Then the dead began to rise and a bokor almost killed every priest we had, and, well, things changed."

Dean considered that. "Alright. What's the plan?"

* * *

_**Thirty miles north-east of New Orleans**_

"You know who I am?" the vampire asked, turning around to look at Ellie.

She looked back at him, careful not to meet his eyes, and shrugged. "Usiku. The first vampire."

"Very good. Yes." He smiled, teeth flashing in the candlelight. "The first eater in the night. The one they all cowered from, behind their bonfires and their bone spears."

"And now you're making deals with other monsters," Ellie said, glancing toward the door.

Usiku looked at her consideringly. "For the moment."

She forced a smile. "Did your mother tell you about them? About why they were locked in Purgatory with her?"

"They are the first beasts," he said, brows drawing together fractionally.

"The first lifeforms with the capacity to destroy everything," Ellie corrected him, her tone dry. "Too successful."

"So you say."

"So the lore of Purgatory says," Ellie countered. "A dimension without time or consumption. A plane for souls and creatures with nowhere else to go, torn apart and reborn for all eternity."

The Alpha vampire turned away, staring at the candles that burned on every surface. From the stillness of his back, Ellie wondered if she'd gotten close to what he had known about the realm of monsters.

"What humanity writes is always questionable," he said, after several minutes of silence.

She couldn't argue that. Everything that had been written down, every history, supposedly real or mythological, was slanted in one way or another by the minds that had interpreted it.

He turned around. "And the man you were with, in the Quarter ... his name?"

Ellie dropped her gaze. She thought she'd felt something, when they'd gone down Bourbon Street. It'd gone but perhaps they'd withdrawn to a greater distance, prepared to wait for the right moment. Which, she considered with a flash of self-contempt, she'd certainly given them.

"What's that to you?"

Usiku reached out, running his fingertips over her hair. "All things are of interest to me," he said, his hand slipping to the comb that held her hair bound in the roll at the back of her head.

He pulled it free and the small, broad blade fell to the floor as her hair spilled free.

Looking down at it, he remarked, "Silver cannot harm most vampires."

"Only the oldest," Ellie agreed, glad to hear her voice was still steady.

"Pick it up," Usiku instructed Simon and the vampire leaned over, scooping the knife from the floor. Almost an equilateral triangle in shape, the two honed edges caught the candlelight, the haft held between two of Simon's fingers.

"Nasty little pigsticker."

"Even vampires can bleed out," Usiku said to him, gesturing to the desk. "I should've let her use it on you."

Simon dropped the blade onto the desk and turned back to his master, head bowed in contrition. "I'm sorry."

"You would've been," the Alpha commented mildly, turning back to Ellie. He slid his hand through her hair, and closed his fingers around it, dragging her head back. "The name of the man?"

"They were watching us," Ellie said, adrenalin pumping through her muscles at the overt threat in his eyes. "You don't need me."

"You're almost right," Usiku said, nostrils flaring as he drank in her scent, his mouth brushing along the side of her neck. "He was very close to being one of mine, and I don't. Like. Losing. My. Children. But I do need you, my dear. I need you to break any resistance he might have."

She felt his mouth stop, close to the big artery, felt the prick of a fang touch her skin. There wouldn't _be_ any opportunities if he turned her, she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs.

_Now or never_. The thought flashpointed in her mind and she was already moving. Her knee came up, with all the force she could muster, knowing it wouldn't have the same effect as on a man, but would still be a shock to the vampire's flesh-and-blood system. Usiku doubled into her, his fingers springing free of her hair as the crown of her knee slammed into him, and Ellie threw her head back, feeling the dull crunch behind her as the back of her skull struck Simon in the face, the light grip he had on her shoulder gone.

She dropped to the floor and rolled sideways, stretching her arms back and under, and getting her bottom and legs through the chain that joined the handcuffs, muscles straining, ignoring the bite of the cuffs against her bones. She rolled again when her hands were in front of her, onto her knees, then her feet.

The blonde vampire flew at her, running into straight into her clenched fists. She felt her knuckles crack as they hit the vampire's mouth, the descended fangs slashing through her skin. Disregarding that bright flare of pain, she swung her arms up, the chain between them glittering for a second in the room's golden light, then disappearing as the chain looped around the vampire's neck and her wrists crossed, pulling it tight and swinging the blonde around on the fulcrum of her own neck.

Had the vamp been a few inches taller, it wouldn't've worked, but she wasn't and Ellie heaved back against the chain, half-jumping to get a knee in the vampire's back, grasping the chain to ease the bite of metal against her wrists. The blonde's snarl was abruptly cut off, her hands alternatively fluttering in front of her and flailing behind her, unable to get a grip on either her attacker or the chain biting through windpipe and collapsing the arteries to either side, pressing deeper, back to the spine.

She had one shot at this, she thought as the vampire bent back, her high, spike heels sliding out from under her. One shot to get to the window and take her chances through the grounds.

"Enough!" Usiku gasped, leaning on the desk and straightening up, his gaze snapping around to the servant standing beside the door.

She didn't hear the pffft of the blown air over the bubbling noises the blonde was making. She barely felt the sting of the dart when it hit her shoulder. Staggering backwards a second later, Ellie found her vision blurring and darkening together, seeing the Alpha and Simon and the vampire's manservant, lowering his blowpipe, merge and part, distorting as they receded into a rapidly approaching black fog. She released her grip on the chain, flinging her arms out for balance, the room beginning to spin and her legs no longer under her control as that black cloud finally closed in around her.

* * *

Dean slid the long, serrated machete into the scabbard sewn into the bandolier, and slipped the broad leather strap over his shoulder, settling it evenly against his chest. He reached back to check that the hilt was within reach. A second, shorter and thicker blade was already in the sheath attached to his belt, just behind his left hip. The Colt was loaded, two magazines in his coat pocket, each hollow point bullet made of silver and filled with dead man's blood. In the other pocket, the bulky tranq gun and twelve two hundred CC darts stuck out a little, the gun already holding one dart. It wasn't enough, not to get through completely but at the same time it didn't look like he was hanging himself out as bait either.

Turning for the stone columns, he started to jog, passing from the brittle edges of the silver moonlight into deep darkness in moments and slowing down as he realised he could barely see.

Three hours had gone by since Ellie'd left the bar. Beneath the rigid control he held over his thoughts, panic was clamouring insistently, a distantly felt roiling turmoil that he was keeping down purely through the certain knowledge that letting it out – letting any emotion out right now – would be a sure way to get her killed. Michel's plan, added to and refined by himself and the others, was a long shot, dependent on things they didn't know and could only hazard reasonable guesses about, and the only thing he liked about it was the way the timing was going to work, leaving it all on him.

As he warmed up, he could smell the paste of herbs and ash that coated his skin, the sickly-sweet carrion scent pervasive enough to cover his own, but not so strong that he wouldn't get a warning whiff if a vamp got close without him hearing or seeing it. He had no intention of leaving a single one of the fangs in the house alive, but the Alpha already knew his smell, would recognise it when he got close enough, and he'd agreed with Colette that there was no point giving the monster any more advantages than it already had.

He stopped as the drive curved around to the right, the trees to either side drawing back and the moonlight lighting the grounds in silver and black. Settling the high spec, lightweight military goggles over his face, he shifted off the drive to the tree line, adjusting the magnification of the goggles until he could see the façade of the house clearly. Within a few minutes, he counted five fangs, patrolling the gardens.

There would be a lot more inside, he thought, crabbing through the thinning trees toward the house. He wanted to take as many as he could and despite the tingling itch in his fingers to pull the machete and start hacking, he was aware that this time he wasn't half-vampire, full of a strength and power that'd amped him up, physically and emotionally, to levels a long way past which his body had been capable.

_You don't have a clue how to kill 'em or slow 'em down, and your plan is, what? Go right at 'em? Genius_.

Taking in a deep breath, Dean closed his eyes as the old hunter's sarcastic comment replayed in his head. He knew how to kill what he was facing, but the acerbic remark was still pertinent. He was outnumbered and going in full throttle on his emotions would only get her killed, and probably him as well. What he needed was precision. Surgical. Clean.

Light flooded the driveway and Dean froze, pulling the goggles from his face as a car pulled out from behind the house and followed the curving driveway toward the gates. A late-model, black four-wheel drive, one of the luxury makes, he realised as it came toward him and he flattened out on the ground. He had a second's glimpse of the driver, the window open and the distinctive profile and swarthy complexion imprinting on his retinas, then the car was gone, tyres crunching over the gravel as the trees closed in and the headlights swept away.

There was no mistaking that face, he'd stared at it hard enough before the car'd dropped.

_Edgar_.

What the fuck were the levis doing here?

Pushing the distracting thought out of his head, he got to his feet, keeping within the shadows and moving incrementally through that cover around the house, trying to get his attention back on the fangs guarding the place instead. He could feel every second tick by inexorably, that steady progression grating on him, and in reaction, he forced himself to check the entire perimeter thoroughly.

Every window and door had been covered. There were seven vamps, in total, moving around the gardens, and by the time he reached the front of the house again, he'd taken out four, using the dead man's blood darts and separating heads from bodies when they'd fallen. Crouched by the corner, he lifted the tranq gun, sighting along the barrel as the moonlight caught the gleam of pale skin.

The gun hissed and he saw the vamp stop, swaying on its feet for a moment before going down. He was rising when another ran across the lawn, stopping to look down at its fallen companion, its head snapping up and looking around the silent grounds wildly. Dean fired again, watching as the fang jerked backward, pawing at its chest, then toppling over in a grotesque slow-motion fall. He tucked the gun back into his pocket and pulled the machete from its sheath, jumping over the low line of shrubs and taking the two heads with hard, single blows, the blade biting deep into the earth. The last of the outside guards came down the drive as he kicked the second head clear and wiped the serrated edge on the grass.

For a searing moment, he felt as juiced as he'd been when the fang's blood had been flowing alongside his own, and time seemed to slow down as he stepped to the side, watching it come at him, its lips drawn back from a bristling mouthful of fangs, too-bright eyes alight with a killing lust. The blade whickered through the air, burying itself in the vampire's back as he swung smoothly around to follow it. The vampire fell forward and Dean yanked the blade free, slamming a boot down on the creature's spine when it tried to rise and dropping to his knee, the machete falling at the same time, its razor edge biting through flesh and bone and sinew and into the blood-soaked earth beneath.

At the base of his throat, his pulse was pounding, and he could hear the rasp of his breath as it entered and exited his lungs. He straightened up slowly, jerking the machete from the ground and wiping the blade, then turned for the front door of the house, sucking in deep lungfuls of air and expelling them, flushing his body with oxygen. Too much rage and he'd lose his control. Not enough and he wouldn't have that adrenalin-sharp edge he needed.

The door opened quietly, but not, he knew, soundlessly enough for vampire hearing. He slipped in and closed it behind him, the back of his neck prickling furiously as he looked around the shadowy hall.

It was empty, and he got the idea that was for him. Sometime in the early a.m., and the vamps should've been up, doing whatever vampires did for fun in the middle of the night when they weren't hunting. The house felt expectant, waiting, and he tried to ignore his internal alarms, ghosting across the hall to the double doors that were partly ajar to the right.

They opened into a massive room, the ceiling the full height of the house, old chandeliers, hanging like dust-shrouded corpses far above the floor, barely visible in the gloom. His eyes adjusted quickly, taking in the iron cages to either side of the room, their occupants still and unmoving. It was all screaming '_TRAP!_' to him, but that was the deal, he told himself, his grip tightening on the Colt as he stepped into the room. All he had to do was find Ellie.

He got three strides across the polished marble floor when the vampires appeared, from behind the columns supporting the high ceiling, along the narrow gallery above the cages, the fledglings leaping to their feet, adding their hisses and squeals to the snarls of the older ones. The Colt boomed, and he emptied the clip in less than a minute, thrusting the gun into his pocket and drawing both machetes, and taking the head of the closest as leapt onto him.

Duck, drop, swing, wrench, turn … the movements were automatic, drilled into his muscles and not requiring any thought. Long nails raked at him, slicing through coat and shirt, across his skin and over his scalp as the fangs closed around him. The two blades kept them off him for the most part and he fought his way across the room, leaving severed body parts in his wake and the marble slick with blood, but his chest was heaving and he could feel a leeching tiredness with the eighth and ninth kill, the machetes gaining weight, second by second. He was slowing down, he thought, reaching deeper for his fury. And if he slowed too much that would be the end.

He heard the noise behind him and dropped to the floor, scything the longer blade out in a wide circle, feeling it hit and bite in and cut through, the fang dropping to the floor with a ear-piercing scream as its feet were severed at the ankle. Slipping in the blood that spilled from the amputations, Dean looked wildly around him, sliding backwards on his knees through the open doors and gaining traction on the hall runner, enough to jacknife to his feet and slam both doors shut in the faces of the remaining vamps. He drove the shorter blade through the ornate and polished handles and leaned against the thick, solid wood, dragging in the deepest breaths he could as fists pounded on the other side. It wasn't going to hold them for long, but he hoped just long enough.

He looked around and headed left, deeper down the hallway into the house, checking the closed doors to either side as he ejected the spent magazine in the Colt and slammed in a new one. The last door was partly open, a too-soft but steady light spilling through the gap onto the hall floor.

_Here we go_, he thought, pushing the door open.

It was a study, spacious and lined with shelving, filled with leather-bound books, the gold leaf titles on their spines gleaming in the light of hundreds of candles. In front of him, standing before a large desk of polished wood, the Alpha vampire was waiting. At his feet, Ellie sprawled, the cobweb grey dress bunched around her waist, her hands cuffed together in front of her. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't moving.

Stepping through the doorway, he felt the presence of the men to either side rather than seeing them, and the Colt yapped twice as he swung one way then the other, putting a round into each of their heads, on instinctive aim alone. Both fell, hitting the soft rug almost at the same time. There was another movement, this time from the armchair positioned by the hearth and Dean watched a tall, lean vampire rise and take a step toward him, his movement curiously fluid.

_Quicksilver_, he thought, glancing around the room. On the floor, several feet from the Alpha, a woman, in a midnight evening gown with dark blonde hair, was sitting on the rug, blood pooled around her. She lifted her head slowly to look at him and he saw the deep indentation in her neck and the spill of blood, now drying, down her chest. He kept his face expressionless as he recognised the cause of those injuries, knowing without having to look that the chain between Ellie's handcuffs would be coated in the vamp's blood.

"Dean Winchester," the Alpha said, waving a hand in invitation. "How is your grandfather these days? I've been looking for him, but he's proved surprisingly elusive."

"Probably because he's dead," Dean said, putting the Colt back in his pocket, his fingers closing around the hilt of the long machete.

"Ah, a shame," Usiku said, shaking his head. "But for him, at least, easier than if I'd found him."

"You looking for someone to blame?" Dean asked, taking a couple more steps into the room, his gaze brushing over the vampire to his left. "Blame Crowley, he's the one who wanted the way into Purgatory."

"You still have feelings of loyalty?" the Alpha asked. "You didn't talk to the djinn who were imprisoned with the rest?"

Dean looked at the vampire, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Didn't have time for chit-chat."

"Samuel told her where to find you," Usiku said, smiling slightly. "Your description, your address, all of it. I would imagine he wanted your help with his project."

He didn't think the inward flinch was visible, and he felt a moment's surprise at it. Aside from the danger it'd brought to Lisa and Ben, it was probably the least of the things his grandfather had tried to do to him and his brother. Samuel'd been driven; he'd gone a long way past the line between human and monster. It might've been something Yellow Eyes had left in him. He'd seen no sign that it was even possible when he'd met the man before the possession.

"Everyone's gotta price," Dean said, with a one-shouldered shrug.

"Indeed they do," the Alpha agreed with a smile, his gaze dropping to the woman at his feet.

Dean felt his stomach dip and lurch. "You think signing up with the Purgatory's most wanted is going to do you any good?"

Usiku leaned back against the desk, looking at him thoughtfully. "Let's just say, at this stage, I see no disadvantages."

"You think they'll give you a slice of the pie?" Dean asked, forcing himself to look around the room, as if Ellie was of no particular interest to him. "They were locked away 'cause they wouldn't share."

"So I've been told." The vampire lifted a sardonic brow. "But as our numbers grow more swiftly each day, and theirs are dwindling, thanks to the efforts of you and others like you, it is a situation that will no doubt change." He looked down at Ellie for a moment, then back to Dean. "You are very up to date. I am curious to discover how it is that she – and you – came by that information?"

"We summoned Death," Dean told him, keeping his tone casual. "Told us God made that lock-box just for them."

He saw surprise bloom on the vampire's face, saw it hidden swiftly and he smiled.

"Your mom never told you all the juicy details about the home place, did she?"

Another nerve hit, he saw, watching Usiku's expression harden.

"Are you suggesting she spoke to you of these things?" the vampire asked, the low, languid drawl gone from his voice. He sounded like he might be getting pissed, Dean thought.

"A hunter? What would you know of the Dark Mother?"

"I know she had a temper," Dean said, his gaze fixed on the Alpha's face. "And I know she was pretty much fatally allergic to phoenix ash. You haven't felt her for awhile, have you?"

"You're lying."

"Yeah, I guess I could be," he allowed, with another shrug. "But what's in it for me?"

The vampire's gaze felt like a burn. "That is a good question."

"You wanted to deal, right?" Dean asked bluntly. "I wouldn't be here, breathing, if you didn't."

The Alpha seemed to relax fractionally, the release of some inner tension smoothing out the lines on his ageless face. "There is a blood debt between us. You are responsible for many deaths of my children. I don't like outstanding debts."

Dean tensed as he watched the Alpha's gaze drop back to Ellie, then across the room to the other vampire. The vampire moved with a flickering speed, almost vanishing from sight as he closed the distance and dropped beside her. He slid an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her, and her head fell back, exposing the long, slender column of her neck. Dean felt his breath catch as he realised he couldn't see any movement at all in the hollow at the base of her throat.

From the other side of the room, there was a rasping groan, and he turned to look at the woman sitting on the floor, grateful for the diversion. He wasn't sure how the hell he was going to get Ellie out against the three of them. "What happened to her?"

"She wasn't quite fast enough," Usiku said, another faint smile playing around his lips. "Your – friend – almost took her head. I have to say I was quite surprised."

It was ridiculous to feel a spurt of pride at the admission, in this place, with the freakin' firstborn vamp standing three feet away, he acknowledged, but he did anyway.

"Ana will no doubt welcome the chance to be healed by draining every last drop of her blood," the Alpha continued, turning to look down at the woman the younger vampire held. "And yes, she's alive. Just sleeping. Very deeply. An old Congolese recipe."

He held up a small glass vial filled with a dark liquid. "A few drops of this, and she'll come out of it."

"What do you want?"

"I want your blood."

Usiku opened the vial, and leaned over Ellie, allowing several drops to fall into her mouth. Watching him, Dean wondered if he could move fast enough to take him. His gaze moved to Ellie as she blinked, eyes opening slowly. He saw her register the hands on her and twist away from them, the cuffs clinking as her hands hit the floor. The Alpha smiled, straightening and returning the vial to his coat pocket.

There was no warning, not even a sound, just a blur of movement and the vampire's hand was wrapped around his jaw, the honey-pale eyes staring into his from a distance of three inches, the scent of rotten blooms and rotten flesh filling his airways.

"No, you have no chance," the Alpha said, his upper lip lifting and the fangs descending, longer and more curved than any other fang he'd ever seen. "None whatsoever."

He barely registered the feeling of the steely fingers releasing him, his eyes straining as he attempted to follow the Alpha's movement, but Usiku stood by the desk again, and Dean rocked back on his heels from the slight push the vampire had given him, shock and disorientation coursing through him as he replayed that nanosecond's worth of movement in his mind. More than a hundred times faster than he could move – on his best day.

On the floor, Ellie coughed, rolling on to her side. Beside her, the younger vampire kept his grip on her shoulder, pulling her upright. She turned her head and Dean watched her eyes widen as she saw him.

"Do you watch her drained of blood?" Usiku asked. "Or do you willingly surrender yourself to pay the debt?"

Ellie lurched to her knees, pulling against the vampire's grip, shaking her head at him.

Dean looked at the vampire, wondering why it hadn't just taken what it'd wanted a moment ago. He couldn't have done anything to stop it, he acknowledged dryly to himself.

"You're into submission?" he asked, trying to inject a facetious note into his voice. The vampire smiled slowly at him.

"In some instances, yes, it's more satisfying to be gifted a sacrifice than to take it."

Looking down at Ellie, Dean met her eyes for a moment, let himself look at her and see every detail, just in case it didn't work and it was the last time. Then he dropped to his knees, his hand releasing the machete, the blade clattering as it fell to the floor beside him, his head bowing forward.

He watched the younger vampire release Ellie, and get to his feet, heard him move behind him, felt a hand reach to take a handful of hair and pull his head back. Dean looked up, seeing the glitter in the Alpha's eyes as Usiku's gaze lowered to stare at his throat.


	7. Chapter 7 Elements of Surprise

**Chapter 7 Elements of Surprise**

* * *

Three quarters of a mile to the west, Colette saw a light flash on her display and she turned to Paul, nodding once sharply. There was a small thunk, as the shell filled the tube, then Paul pulled the guard free and the backflash from the rear of the launcher filled the small clearing on the side of the hill, the coordinates flashing in synchronisation on both the digital display of the field launcher and on Colette's radar screen.

She saw it hit, her gaze jumping upward from the screen to see the explosion in real terms, the second storey of the big house hit and more than half vaporised with the detonation.

"Go."

The single word sounded in the earpieces of the men at the edge of the estate's grounds and through the glasses, she watched Denis, Maurice and Etienne racing across the lawns, their doubled-over figures lit up by the fires raging through the upper storey.

"Can you manage this?" Michel asked her, taking the launcher from Paul and checking his machete. His wife turned around to look at him with a mock scowl.

"Of course, go – there were more than thirty in there!"

She watched Michel and Paul start running, following their progress down through the thin growth of woods to the estate walls, then checked her monitors again. The thermal scan was almost useless with the fire, but still showing movement in the largest room. A distant creaking crash came to her, along with the scent of smoke, and she looked back at the house. According to the sparse research she'd managed to find before they'd left, it'd been built in the early eighteen hundreds and despite the general humidity of the region, its timbers would be aged and dry. It would be only minutes before the entire place was an inferno and falling in on itself.

Keeping one eye on the monitors as she disassembled and packed the launcher up, gathered her data collection devices one by one, and repacked the ammunition into the steel boxes. Katrina had brought more than floods and devastation to her family and her life. It'd changed the very core of what she and Michel had done all their lives, adding an aspect she still wasn't sure she cared for. Maurice had been the hunter in their family, and he'd put his skills to work for the Army. Now they were all in it. It was spilt milk, she told herself for the thousandth time, frowning a little as she loaded the cases into the van. Closing the door, she wondered absently if Dean had had a chance to kill the 'master' of the nest, and if it had been the firstborn vampire.

* * *

Dean closed his eyes, concentrating every part of his attention on listening. The distinctive whistle came less than a second after he'd activated the signal and he jabbed one elbow back, feeling it hit the vampire behind him in the ribs, his other hand scrabbling on the floor for the hilt of the machete.

He lost a patch of scalp as he tore free of the fang's grip, rocking forward to get some distance, the heavy blade slicing upward and taking its hand off at the wrist, continuing around on its flat arc to scrape over the Alpha's dark suit. Usiku's hiss was lost in the thundering roar of the explosion as the shell hit the upper level of the house and half the ceiling in the study came crashing down onto them.

"Dean!"

Head snapping around at Ellie's cry, Dean saw the interior wall bulging toward them. The female vampire had been buried under the big beams supporting the ceiling, and flames were already licking over them. The male was at the door, arm held tightly against his chest, and Dean saw his eyes open wide in shock when the Alpha appeared beside him, mouth bloody from the bite that had almost severed the vampire's head. For a second, the ancient vampire stared at him and he stared back, unable to move, sound and vision receding and muting, leaving only the Alpha's pale eyes, fixed on him. A hand grabbed his arm and the spell, if that's what it was, was broken, leaving Dean staring at nothing. The Alpha had gone, and he scrambled to his feet, following Ellie as she ran to the window, arms bent over her head to crash through, diving through the shattered panes after her.

Outside, the night air seemed cold, and it was as if his hearing had come back, not just the crackle and roar of the fire, he could hear sirens somewhere distantly, the screams of the vamps trapped inside, shouts of familiar voices.

"C'mon," he said, looking at Ellie, and wiping a dust-covered hand over a thin cut that ran down her cheek. "Time to go."

She nodded, shaking off the splintered wood and bits of glass that covered her, stumbling a little behind him, her hands still cuffed together. From the French doors just ahead, two men burst out of the house, turning mid-stride on the broad porch as a screaming shape emerged behind them.

Dean accelerated toward the burning vampire, swinging his machete mid-stride and watching the flaming head flying into the garden as the body collapsed.

"Where're Denis and Paul?" he asked Maurice, his gaze flicking from him to Michel, standing beside Ellie.

"On the other side," Maurice answered, waving an arm at the corner of the house. "We barricaded that ballroom and most the first floor fell into it."

"Sacre bleu!"

Dean and Maurice turned at Michel's shout, raising their arms to shield their eyes against the brilliance of the flames. Inside the house, Dean made out the Alpha, his form wavering through the rising heat distortions, his arms stretched out to either side, apparently sheltering his fledglings. There was a rush of air and the fire came billowing out the breaking windows at them, and when he looked back, there was nothing but flame in the room.

"Get out of here, now!" he yelled at the others, turning to jump off the porch. The gardens and drive were lit up by the conflagration behind them, and as they rounded the corner of the burning house, the light brightened, a white heart in the centre of the interior. Flares, he remembered Colette saying.

"Magnesium," Ellie gasped, her voice still a little hoarse, as she ran beside him. "Don't look at it."

It was too bright to look at it anyway, he thought, watching his shadow racing ahead of him, the drive disappearing under his feet when they turned off the gravel and the bleached-out and rapidly drying grass of the lawn taking over.

On the low ridge above the estate, headlights came on, flashing once and going off again and he altered his direction. The sirens he'd heard before were closer. Fire department, and probably cops. He hoped there'd be nothing but ash left in the building or the city's finest were going to have nightmares.

A crackling in the undergrowth to his left snapped his head around, the brief spurt of action-ready adrenalin receding when he saw the familiar tall outline of the houngan striding toward them. Behind Etienne, he caught a flash of Paul's dark features, darker now with soot and ash coating him, and beyond Colette's younger brother, Maurice and Michel were climbing steadily through the thin woods.

"There was a leviathan," Ellie muttered, turning her head to look back at him. "In the house –"

He nodded. "Yeah, I saw him leave."

They reached the county road and saw the van. Following Ellie up to it, Dean felt the last of his adrenalin-fuelled energy starting to seep away, and remembered that he still had to deal with the confession that'd precipitated the last four hours. He climbed into the back of the van and sat beside Ellie, chewing on the corner of his lip as Michel and Etienne got into the front seat, crowding against Colette, and Paul, Maurice and Denis squeezed into the back with them.

"Are you – uh – alright?" he asked Ellie, his voice low as Colette started the engine and the van began to reverse up the narrow road.

"Fine," Ellie replied, glancing at him then away.

_Fine_, he thought, unwilling to go any further in front of the three men sitting on the other side. He looked down at a clinking noise and suddenly realised she was still cuffed, the chain between the metal circlets darkened. He remembered the deep indentation in the female fang's neck.

"You got anything handy to get these off?" Ellie asked Maurice, holding out her hands.

Dean reached for his coat pocket. "I got –"

"Perhaps we should leave these on," Maurice said, leaning forward to catch the chain between her hands and grinning at Dean. "Keep you out of trouble."

He felt his stomach churn as he saw Ellie's expression smooth out. _Dammit, don't make the situation worse_, the acerbic thought flashed through his mind. He had no idea how he was going to deal with the situation when they finally got some time alone as it was.

* * *

Maurice unlocked the cuffs, and Ellie rolled her wrists gingerly, the bruising and tears in her skin, where the metal edges had cut into her when she'd tried to strangle the blonde vampire, aching fiercely.

Paul pulled off his coat, handing it to her. "Here. Not much of that dress."

Taking it from him and swinging it around her shoulders, she heard Dean's frustrated exhale beside her. She wanted to tell him it didn't matter, that she knew he'd had other things on his mind. She couldn't make herself to do it. There was a wall there, between them, invisible and inelastic, and she kept her gaze on the floor of the van.

He'd found her, and come for her, bringing the whole cavalry in defiance of the way he usually worked, and she guessed that might've been a sign of how worried he'd been. It meant something. She couldn't reconcile what he'd told her with that, in fact. Couldn't make the edges fit at all.

The whole lot was an unholy mess, she thought, pulling the edges of the coat more closely around her. She couldn't make any of it fit and she wondered what it was she wasn't seeing clearly. Dean and his contradictory accounts and actions? The presence of the Alpha vampire and its plans with the peculiar-looking nest and the apparent deal between it and the leviathan weren't any more explicable, but at least they weren't hitting her on a vulnerable level.

The leviathan had seen her. Seen her and, she thought with a slight shiver, recognised her. Not well enough to have done anything, but its expression had been thoughtful. She straightened slightly on the narrow bench seat, wondering how hard it would be for them to check the hotels in the area and get the name and all the details of her current alias. It only led to a postal box in Richmond, but that was still far too close for comfort. _Worry about it when you have some information_, she told herself firmly. She didn't need the heebie-jeebies about something that might not've occurred at all.

The Alpha had only kept her alive to get Dean. She stole a sideways look at him and a small crease appeared between her brows as she reminded herself that she'd known when Usiku had asked, he hadn't needed her confirmation on the man his servants had seen her with. What had he wanted from the hunter? Dean had mentioned his grandfather's collecting, working for Crowley to capture the firstborn monsters. Crowey'd been looking for a way into Purgatory, he'd said. It didn't explain why Usiku had wanted him, she thought.

_You're going to dance around questions that have no answers all night instead of focussing on what caused this mess in the first place_, she asked herself acerbically? It wasn't something she had any answers for either.

Had he changed in the last couple of months? Had the job gotten too hard? Made a choice like that seem reasonable? The apathy in him, when she'd gotten to the motel room in Pennsylvania, came back to her, the way he'd slumped back against the door, shoulders dropping. She'd seen him low before. Seen him fighting against his fear, against the memories of what he'd done and the uncertainty of what the angels were telling him. Seen him trying to pretend that he and Sam were still good, still solid. She'd hadn't seen him like that. And, she realised slowly, that was what was scaring her.

There were the problems with Sam. The hallucinations and hownervous they were making him, on top of lying about what he'd done. She remembered his recounting of finding Sam in the warehouse, waving a gun, firing it. He thought he'd had a good reason to doubt Sam's ability to judge the kitsune and while he might not have felt guilty about killing her, she had no doubt he'd felt guilty about killing a friend of his brother's. A childhood friend. Sam hadn't had that many. Dean would've been trying hard to not make a comparison between the monster and himself, and what he'd done for family, she knew. It was one of the things that'd made dealing with his memories of Hell so difficult … and now … She let out a soft exhale, wishing she'd had the time to think all of this through earlier. Now, whatever he hadn't gone through about that would have come back. Maybe stronger.

Losing Cas was yet another thing. Another thing not dealt with. Another thing he hadn't been able to work his way through. His relationship with the angel had been difficult, she knew. Cas had been pushed and pulled around by Heaven as much as the brothers had, believing he knew what was happening and being deceived by his own kind. He'd come through for Dean at a time when Sam hadn't been there, and that'd had its own impact. The angel's subsequent lies, the betrayal of trust and the destruction of Sam's fragile well-being had been a hammer-blow to Dean and one which he hadn't been able to get clear in his head before the leviathan had consumed Cas and escaped.

They were far off the grid, he'd told her. No Impala. Not able to see their old contacts. Changing numbers and aliases all the time. More time spent in condemned squats than anywhere else. Rufus' cabin was a base of sorts, but it wasn't a place they could spend much time, too far out of the way. And another one of their childhood homes, Bobby's place, was nothing but wreckage and ash. It was another thing that'd been taken from him, another thing lost to the life that he seemed to be hating, more and more.

She leaned back against the side of the van and closed her eyes. The previous year had been no better. Dean had told her about Cas pulling Sam from the cage without his soul reluctantly. Not, she'd thought at the time, because he didn't want her to know about it, but because he hadn't wanted to look back at those memories, hadn't wanted to relive them. He'd told her that trying to make it work out with the Braedens had been something he'd held onto, thinking he couldn't hope for anything else, and maybe he even saw it that way. She didn't think he realised how much he'd gotten from that year, stepping outside of his life and seeing it from a different perspective, from an observer's perspective; learning about himself, even if he hadn't seen it all that clearly. His grief had been immense and he'd found his way out of it, or most of it.

Was it the cumulation of all those things, perhaps bearable if they'd come separately, one at a time, or if he'd had the time to work his way through them, but unendurable when piled one on the other, in days or weeks, with no way out but through and no time at all to deal with one thing before something else happened?

And then, in Dearborn, he'd been forced to relive some of the worst times. There was something about what he'd said about Osiris that was nagging at her, something that continued to scratch at the back of her mind, a phrase or a word. She tried to call it back, but it wouldn't come, dancing out beyond conscious recall. Something about punishment, she thought, trying to force the conversation to return. Or guilt. Or both.

"Michel, take the van back to Lawrence, please, _ma cher_," Colette's voice interrupted her futile attempts at recollection as the sound of the engine idling and the cessation of movement registered.

"End of the line," Maurice said, getting to his feet and ducking his head. "Prepare yourself for my sister's interrogation, Ellie."

She opened her eyes and looked up at him, getting to her feet as the side door opened, and reaching for his hand. "Thank you," she said to him, squeezing his hand lightly and looking back at Paul and Denis. "All of you."

"Ah, _chère_, we are just the grunts, you will have to make your thanks to Dean," Denis told her, getting to his feet. "He would've gone alone, nearly did when he thought we were taking too long."

Glancing down at him, Ellie saw his discomfort at being singled out, knew he didn't want to talk about that – or anything else – in front of an audience.

"I'll do that," she said, watching his head lift and his eyes widen a little in question as they met hers. She looked away and followed Maurice out of the van, finding Colette beside her.

"A hot bath," the small woman told her in a low voice. "Good food. And then, the whole story."

It was, she thought, both a promise and a threat.

* * *

Dean grimaced as he climbed out of the van, a host of aches stiffening up on the drive back and his head pounding with the thought of having to talk to Ellie when Colette and the others left them alone.

He watched her climb the stairs to the house, and slowly followed Maurice, Paul and Denis inside.

"There's a shower in the laundry, Dean," Maurice said, gesturing down the hall. "Make it quick, the rest of us need it too."

Glancing down the hallway, Dean thought of arguing. The hot water would do something for the general aches, but he couldn't find any enthusiasm for getting clean only to get back into blood and ash-covered clothes.

As if she'd read his thoughts, Colette appeared at the foot of the stairs, her arms full of clothes. She pushed past the men and headed for the laundry, calling back over her shoulder, "Clean clothes and hot water and we can talk after, _oui_?"

He shrugged inwardly and walked after her, standing in the doorway as she set the piles of clothes on the dresser and waved a hand at the generously proportioned shower cubicle.

"There are towels, soap, antiseptic in the cupboard," she instructed casually, looking at the wall cabinet above the dresser. "Michel will be back in an hour."

Nodding, Dean pulled off his coat, then peeled off his blood-soaked shirt and dropped it in the deep laundry tub.

"Dean," Colette said softly from the door and he started a little, thinking she'd left.

"You were as surprised as we were when Etienne said he could see her in that place," she continued. "You thought she would be dead – or turned – already, didn't you?"

He looked down at the clothes in the tub, wondering how much he could tell her. They were friends, good friends, but they weren't hunters, not really, and civilians had some funny ideas about some things.

"I didn't know," he hedged, turning to look at her. "I hoped …"

"Maurice and Paul say there were more than thirty vampires in that house," Colette said. "In cages. You know why a nest would have cages, _cher_?"

"Yeah, I know," he admitted, his breath gusting out. "It's, uh, a new playing field now."

"You will tell us about this, later, won't you?"

It wasn't a request and his mouth lifted to one side in a rueful smile.

"Yeah, I'll tell you what I know."

"Good," she said, her hand reaching for the door knob. "And Dean –"

He dragged his tee shirt over his head and dropped it on top of the shirt and coat. "Yeah?"

"You don't wear your heart where others can see it," Colette said, her voice gentling. "But whatever is wrong between you and Ellie, it would be better to talk about it, yes? Rather than lose each other to some random – or not random – incident?"

"Yeah."

"Good." She withdrew from the room and Dean dropped to one knee, unlacing his boots and pulling them off.

He would've talked about it if she'd given him the chance, he thought, his brows knitting together as he unbuckled his belt. Would've kept talking until he'd made her understand. He stripped off his jeans and socks and turned on the water in the shower, stepping in when the first wisps of steam began to rise. He'd been worried enough to follow her – or try to. But he hadn't thought of monsters. Hadn't considered them at all.

The heat loosened the stiffness and soothed the aches, and he tipped his head back, letting loose the reactions he'd kept jammed behind the walls in his mind for the last four and a half hours. Fear and anger and that yearning ache he had no real name for. Worry and guilt. He let them shudder through him, tightening his chest and closing his throat, feeling them dissipate gradually in the rush of hot water and steam.

He hadn't known for sure it'd been the Alpha there, but he'd felt some kind of certainty about it, he remembered, despite not having given Eve or her kids a single thought in the last few months.

Maybe it'd been at the back of his mind, he considered, turning off the water and grabbing a towel, working away back there because of what he'd seen in that nest. All those kids. He'd told his Samuel and his brother that the Alpha was building an army, and that alone should've gotten them moving on doing something about it, but too many other things had gotten in the way. The jolt he'd gotten, when the tramp'd said 'master' … it'd brought it all back and the thing he'd been most scared of; the thing that'd been driving him the whole way there, that'd jerked his adrenalin levels to new highs, had been that the Alpha would turn her.

He ducked his head, leaning on one arm as he forced himself to face the last of that fear, to let it bubble through his blood and go. They had the cure, but he didn't think anyone could get _that_ vampire's blood, not and live to do anything with it. Like demon's teeth and dragon tears, it was one of those ingredients that defied the realms of possibility.

Against the black of his closed eyes, he saw Ellie's face again, drawn with a painful belief that he was going to give up. He hadn't been able to tell her it wasn't real. Straightening, he turned off the taps and stepped out of the cubicle. She wouldn't have believed it … before, he thought, would've known it was a ploy, would've been ready for whatever he had in mind. He'd broken something between them, broken something in her, the part that'd believed in him completely.

* * *

In the bathroom upstairs, Ellie dried herself off, dressing quickly in the too-short jeans and too-small top Colette had left for her. She looked down at the ragged edges of the cuts on her wrists and opened the wall cupboard, pulling out iodine, antiseptic powder and a couple of dressings and swabbed and puffed at them, wrapping the short dressings around them and clipping them tight. They wouldn't take long to heal, she thought, replacing the items in the cupboard, but it would go faster if she wasn't knocking and scraping them on everything in the meantime.

Colette had made good on her threat to question her, trapping her as she laid in the bath. She'd told her what she could. What had happened to Dean, and the way she'd reacted, was no one's business but their own. The Alpha, the nest, the leviathan, those things she could talk about. Every hunter needed to know what was happening out there, and through Colette and Michel, Etienne and Maurice, the people who lived on the edges of their world would be warned as well.

Wiping away the condensation from the mirror, she looked critically at her reflection. For one heart-stopping moment, when Dean had dropped to his knees and laid down his machete, she'd thought he was going to do it. Sacrifice himself for her, give up and let the Alpha kill him. It'd been so close to what he'd said, she hadn't been able to make herself not believe in it. He'd looked at her and his eyes had been full of shadows, regrets, she'd thought then. Or an apology. She hadn't been able to see anything else.

When the shell had hit the house, she'd been as stunned as the vampires, barely able to move when Dean'd attacked Simon and nicked Usiku. That reaction, that lack of reaction, was bothering her more than she was ready to admit to, she realised, picking up a comb and running it through her hair.

That first time, in Ellen's bar, when he'd sat down next to her and started to talk, she'd looked at him and memory had returned. Not all of it, just one fragment. His eyes. Looking down at her. His face. Very young and screwed up with what he'd known was coming, his hands holding her tightly. Most of the memories of that time were gone. Trauma or self-preservation, she wasn't sure why, but when Sam had told her about them finding her that day, she figured it might not have been a bad thing to not remember the details.

Over the last four years, that first jarring thunderbolt of memory had built into something that exhilarated and scared her, for its promise and for what it could do to her. He had a hold on her heart in a way no one else had come close to, but it came with a price that often felt too high. A need that left her so vulnerable she couldn't stand to show it. And an unvoiced and, for the most part, unacknowledged yearning to give everything, no matter what the cost. It was diametrically opposed to the way she'd grown up, keeping her business – and herself – to herself.

It was making it hard to trust in him, that feeling, she thought, putting down the comb, her fingers automatically separating her hair into three skeins, and she couldn't think of a way to get around that. Loving someone – it was supposed to mean that you could trust them, she thought. And until he'd told her he'd wanted to die, she knew she had. As much as she could, she amended a second later, fastening the elastic around the end of the braid and turning away from the mirror. Not nearly enough.

_I didn't have time to do anything but get my crap swept away and held down as fast I could shovel it._

An old god; a questionable monster; witches with marriage issues; leviathans, wearing their faces, spree-killing across the country … and instead of the break he'd wanted and desperately needed, he'd had to go Full Metal Jacket through the house of the oldest vampire and his nest of – what? – fledglings?

She caught her lower lip between her teeth as she paused at the bedroom door. Thanks to her, right? Running out, letting emotion drive her. Forgetting the rules. Forgetting what she did … forgetting who the hell she was.

* * *

Dean pushed the plate aside, most of its contents uneaten. Dawn had come and gone an hour ago and the kitchen was full of pale, early sunshine, pitilessly showing the lines and shadows denoting a lack of sleep on the faces of those sitting at the table.

"Right now, he's succeeding," Paul argued with Denis, stabbing his fork in the air for emphasis. "There were more than thirty in that nest – and in –" He turned and looked at Dean, brows lifting. "– Limestone, was it? – he says there were at least twenty. There aren't that many hunters who can handle vampire nests at the sizes they used to be, let alone nests like that! They'll overrun us as well as the bigmouths within a few years."

"If he wants a war, we can give him a war –" Maurice muttered.

"Will there be reprisals? Against us?" Colette cut him off with an impatient glance, turning back to Dean.

He glanced at Ellie and saw her slight head shake at the question. He didn't think so either. "I don't think so," he said. "The Alpha left, and he's got a tiger by the tail if he thinks he's gonna make deals with the levis."

Looking around at the others, he added, "But this town, you know, it's always been easy for them."

Denis nodded. "That is true, for more than just the bloodsuckers. The bokor have been active in the last year, ghouls too in the cemeteries of Metaire."

Dean looked at Ellie. She was listening, a small crease between her brows, but her gaze was on the window, and she hadn't looked at him directly since she'd come downstairs.

The door opened and Michel came in, trailed by his twelve-year old daughter, Monique.

"They found the hotel," he said without preamble, going to the stove and the coffee pot. "It's still burning."

"The vampires?" Paul asked. Michel picked up his cup, turning and shaking his head.

"The leviathan, I think," he said. "There were at least two interested parties watching the scene; one of them matched your description, Dean."

"Waiting for you," Colette mused, turning to look at Dean then Ellie. "The register, it was in a different name?"

Ellie nodded, letting out a soft exhale. "Yeah, I used an alias, but the truck's useless now. They'll have the details of the alias." She rubbed her fingers over her brow. "I have to get back to Richmond."

"We have vehicles," Michel told her. "Clean ones. They're in the alley."

"You need to get some sleep," Colette said disapprovingly as Ellie got to her feet. "A few hours."

"I'll get some on the way," Ellie said over her shoulder, following Michel, and Dean got up, scowling.

"_We'll_ get some on the way," he corrected tersely, directing the comment to her departing back as he started after them.

Ellie stopped at the doorway, her shoulders hunching up for a second, then dropping, appearing to rethink the prospect of having an argument in front of everyone. Letting out his breath, Dean looked at Colette.

"It's not me who doesn't want to talk," he said and Colette got her feet, walking to him.

"You remember Yvette, Dean?" she asked him, one hand dropping to his arm as he looked at the doorway.

Dean nodded warily. Colette's cousin had been one of the reasons he'd met the family. One of the reasons too, he'd ended up with cracked ribs and a three-month stay with them.

"She asked me, after you'd left, if I thought you were worth pursuing," Colette told him with a bland expression. "I told her that you were already committed – to the life you were raised in. The life you knew. I was wrong, wasn't I?"

"No," Dean said, his gaze dropping uncomfortably. "Not then. Now? Maybe." He looked at the doorway again. "Maybe not."

"Do you really not want to know?" she asked, releasing him. "Despite everything, _cher_, it has been good to see you again."

"You too," Dean said. "Can you, uh, say 'bye to the others?"

"Of course."

* * *

Michel walked with Ellie to the garage in the rear lane, taking a set of keys from a board and handing them to her.

"It's the wagon at the end of the lane," he said, looking at her truck. "We can do something with that. A new colour, new plates. Paul could return it to you in a few months?"

"Keep it," Ellie said, putting the wagon's keys in her pocket and opening the truck door. "I'll get something else when I get home."

She lifted the rear seat and pulled out a canvas bag, transferring her belongings, weapons and miscellanea from the truck to the bag. "Do you have the stuff I asked for?"

"Yes, sorry," Michel said, turning away and stepping to one side as Dean came up behind him. "We had it all ready – I'll get it."

* * *

Dean watched him walk out of the garage and looked back to Ellie. "Got a car?"

"Yeah," she said, checking that the rear compartment was empty and pulling the bag out. As she closed the rear door and moved to the front, she glanced at him. "It's probably going to be less conspicuous if we take separate cars."

He gave a snort of disbelief, then looked more closely at her. "You think I'm okay with splitting up – after that?"

"I'm sorry. That was my fault," Ellie said bluntly, transferring the contents of the console and glove box to the bag. "I wasn't paying attention. It won't happen again."

"No," he said, his voice deepening a little as he realised what she wanted. "No more taking off. Okay? It doesn't work. You ask me anything you want, Ellie, but ask, alright? Don't just quit on me 'cause you think you got it all figured out."

He watched her zip up the bag and sling it over her shoulder, her head bowed as she seemed to stare at the floor.

"Alright." She lifted her head and handed him the keys. "Your stuff in the lock box?"

He nodded and she reached into the truck and pulled out the keys, giving them to him.

* * *

_**Two hours later, I-20N Louisiana**_

Ellie drove the unexceptional station wagon toward Meridian, keeping to the speed limit. She wore sunglasses to cut the morning glare and a narrow-brimmed sunhat, to hide her hair. On the passenger side of the bench seat, Dean was sleeping, contorted into the corner between the seat back and the door, his legs askew in the generous well. Two bags, both ex-Army duffels, were in the back seat.

The sum total of their possessions at this time, she thought with a slightly sour smile, glancing at them through the rearview mirror. It was lucky they'd left their gear in truck. The hotel had been gutted, the street stinking of wet ash and melted plastics as they'd driven down the cross street, seeing the thinning smoke on their way out of the city.

They'd talked a little, had stopped for gas and coffee in Picayune and were taking a different route to the one they'd come in on. She'd asked him where he wanted to go, and he'd shrugged, telling her he could get another car in Richmond if he needed to. He'd asked her what she was going to do, and she'd told him the rough plan. Get her stuff boxed up and put into a storage place until she could figure out a better base, something she could protect. She didn't really have much of an idea of what she was going to do, only that her library and the artefacts and weapons she'd collected over the past few years were irreplaceable – both for the power they contained and the knowledge they held and she needed to make sure they were safe.

_Don't give up on me just 'cause you think you've got it all figured out_, he'd said. She wondered if that's what she'd wanted to do. It was hard, harder than she'd thought it could be, but at the same time, even now, she couldn't imagine walking away, not saying goodbye and meaning it.

_It's only hard because you're afraid_, she thought. There wasn't any getting around that. It was as real a risk as their lives were.

Beside her, there was a groan and she glanced to the right as Dean levered himself upright, one hand rubbing over his eyes, the other patting his pockets as if he were looking for something. He blinked and focussed on her and the patting stopped as he straightened up against the back of the seat.

"Where're we?"

"About fifteen minutes south of Meridian," she told him, looking back at the road.

"You wanna break?" he asked, the words distorting as a yawn overtook him.

She shook her head. "No, I'm good for a while. Got some kind of second wind about an hour back."

The day was sunny, the wide open skies blue and the traffic was moving well. The station wagon was an auto, and all she had to do was steer … and think. She could feel Dean's thoughts as well, his face far more expressive than he liked to believe, and even his silences gave something away.

She didn't want to ask him about the god again, she thought. Not yet. Taking a deeper breath, she said instead, "So, uh, you recognised the levi?"

She saw him turn toward her in the periphery of her vision, heard him shifting his position.

"Yeah," he said. "We ran into that one at Bobby's. Edgar." He shook his head. "Seems like one of the higher ups in whatever chain of command they got."

"The Alpha didn't seem to know much about them."

"No, I don't think he got the low-down from Eve before we killed her," he said, his tone a little wary. "Did he say anything while Edgar was there?"

"Something about having an agreement," Ellie told him, brow furrowing as she recalled the exact wording. "He told Edgar to 'tell his master' that they had an arrangement."

* * *

Nodding half to himself, Dean stared through the windshield. If the levis were divvying up the population between themselves and the rest of the monsters, it could only be short term.

"Usiku said you were almost one of his," Ellie said, and he belatedly caught the hint of strain in her voice. He hadn't told her about that. Hadn't told her much about Sam when he'd been walking around without his soul. He'd wanted to … but a lot of the memories of that period blew bigtime and he hadn't wanted to revisit them.

"Sam told you about Cas leaving his soul down in the cage when he got him out, didn't he?" he asked.

Ellie nodded. "He said Cas told him it wasn't deliberate."

Letting out a gusty exhale, Dean shrugged. "Doesn't matter if it was or wasn't," he said. "Sam was hunting without a soul for more than a year, and he was –"

He hesitated, wondering how to describe how different his brother had really been. Empty. He'd looked into Sam's eyes and seen nothing there. Not really. A sharp intelligence and an uncaring curiosity. His brother had been a very good hunter in that time, he'd said.

"Cold?"

Turning to look at her, he nodded. "Yeah. I thought he'd been possessed – or that Lucifer was controlling him somehow, just biding his time to screw us both over."

"What did he do?" Ellie asked.

"We picked up that vampire case, in Limestone," he said, rubbing the heel of his hand over his forehead. "Sam – he knew Samuel had a cure – but when I got trapped by a fang, he didn't move."

"What?"

He felt an instant surge of gratitude at her reaction, ducking his head to hide it. He'd gone over the whole scenario so many times, he'd just about talked himself out of the disbelieving anger he'd felt when he'd realised what his brother had done. Soul or no soul.

"He waited 'til I'd been turned, then came in, drove the vamp off," he said. His memories were too vivid of those few hours following. Light and sound that'd reamed his senses. And the hunger that'd come too close to devouring him.

"Why?" Ellie demanded, and he saw her hands were tight around the wheel, the freshly scabbed knuckles showing white.

"He figured it was the best shot of getting into the nest and finding out what was going on," Dean explained, as neutrally as he could. He'd had to get into the nest. The cure'd insisted on the blood of the vampire that'd turned him. He was still a bit surprised that it hadn't occurred to him then that Sam had known that – had known and could've killed the vamp straight away but hadn't.

"But – god, Dean – the risk –"

"Yeah."

Risk on risk. Risk that he wouldn't be able to keep control of that ferocious hunger. Risk that he'd harm someone, and he almost had – he'd been so close to the edge when he'd gone to see Lisa, he still didn't know how the hell he'd gotten out of there without tearing her throat out. Risk that he wouldn't be able to find the vampire – or kill it if he did. Risk that in that situation, inside the nest, and under the hypnotic control of the Alpha, he would do something irrevocable, something that would damn him to becoming a monster, becoming what he hated and that Sam – or some other hunter – would have to kill.

"You said – uh, your grandfather had a cure?" Ellie asked.

"Yeah, old family recipe, apparently," he said, taking a breath and leaning back. "The key ingredient was the blood of the vampire who turns the victim, so I had to go into the nest for him anyway."

"And it was like that one? The one I was taken to?"

"Down to the cages," he confirmed. "The vamp running it said he was old, six hundred years old."

He saw her startle again, her fingers biting into the wheel. "Dean, that's – you had to kill a vampire that old? How did you even see him?"

"That's – uh – that's kind of where it got funky," he admitted. "I had dead man's blood, a whole syringe full, but he figured it and broke the damned thing along with my fingers … then … we got a message."

"Message? From who? Usiku?"

"Yeah, telepathically or through the bloodlines or something, I don't know," he said, eyes closing as he recalled the floating sensation he'd had, the room spinning around and around, watching the eyes of the vampire rolling back into its head and watching it collapse to the floor, then feeling himself falling as well, his mind hijacked and image after image inserted into his thoughts. The symbolism had been disorienting but there'd been no mistaking the intentions.

"I came around and the fucker'd unlocked all the cages and it was me against them," he said. "I think he thought I might feed on them if enough blood got spilled."

"But your body had adapted by that time, hadn't it?"

He looked at her profile, surprised at that understanding. He hadn't gotten that until afterward. How much stronger, how much _faster_ he'd been. All his skills plus a super-charged power that'd amped it all up to eleven. He'd been able to hear Sam's heartbeat from across the room. Had been able to see in total darkness, not using some sonar pinging like a bat, but just his eyes, and maybe, he'd considered later on, some kind of thermal sensitivity. To the living. The warmth of their blood.

"Yeah," he replied, trying to shake off those memories. "I got him and Samuel made the cure and it felt like I was dying, but it worked."

It was, he thought, too summarised a version to give any indication of what any of it had felt like. His memory of driving back from Battle Creek was surreal, like a video game, the car redlining in total darkness, no need for lights, just him and the car and the road. A bat out of Hell if ever there'd been one. The cure had dragged the vampire's blood back out of him, out of his cells, out of the marrow of his bones, and it'd been agonising, but at the time he'd've preferred death to what he'd been turning into and he'd known he couldn't keep a grip on the hunger for much longer.

"They were turning young guys, who'd go out and turn girls," he said, shaking his head a little. "All of 'em thinking it was some kind of romantic thing."

"No trick to getting teenagers to believe that the life of a vampire is a tragic romance," Ellie said, her tone dry. "Even from Bram Stoker, all the foundations were already there."

He got a flash of the bedroom. The girl they'd gone to the place to find. Red and black and about as designer goth as it got, he'd thought back then. A little too clean. The well-thumbed paperback novels.

"The guys seemed to buy into it too," he said. "Figured it was an easy way to get laid."

She snorted and his mouth lifted on one side. He'd been surprised at the teen's confession. He couldn't really imagine pretending to be a monster in order to get some, although, he admitted to himself, he'd pretended to be practically everything else.

"Why didn't you tell me about that?" she asked, a few moments later.

"I didn't want to think about it," he told her. "When I figured it, that Sam'd done it deliberately … I mean, I didn't know he didn't have his soul then, and it felt –"

It'd felt worse than his betrayal over Ruby, he thought, turning away and looking out the window. It'd felt like trust was something he wouldn't have, would never have again.

"Another betrayal." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah."

Staring at the landscape speeding by, Dean realised that he hadn't told her much about that year at all, partly because a lot of it had been confusing and painful and he hadn't looked at it that much himself, partly because he didn't want to keep bringing up his time with Lisa and Ben, time when he'd thought he'd needed them, time when Ellie had heard from Bobby that he'd been still trying and had stayed away. The entire time she'd been gone had been a disaster zone and he'd just as soon as forgotten it all completely.

"A lot of crap went down, over those first few months that Sam was back," he said. "He'd been hunting with Samuel and our cousins, no soul, no conscience, just doing whatever the job'd demanded, and we had to clean up some of those messes. I don't know. No one thought it was a good idea to get his soul back, but I couldn't leave him like that. It was – pointless, you know? It wasn't Sam. And it sure as hell wasn't anyone I could trust to have my back. Not after that."

"How – how'd you find out?" Ellie asked.

"Cas finally showed up long enough to check," Dean said, his stomach rolling a little at that memory. After Veritas, everything had crashed down on him, every second of doubt, every moment of fear, and he'd trussed Sam to a chair and beaten the crap out of him, trying to get to the truth. Sam hadn't known what the truth was, and, he thought, Cas hadn't admitted to what'd happened.

"Cas made out like it was a surprise, Sam's soul being left in the cage," he told her. "He didn't tell us he and Crowley'd pulled him out for a long time after."

From the corner of his eye, he saw her flinch, guessing at the reason. He'd needed someone he could trust, back then, had been desperate for that. He'd tried talking to Bobby, but it'd left him feeling weaker and more vulnerable, having to spill his guts to the old hunter, just to get the mess out of his head. Bobby'd understood, most of it anyways, he just hadn't had the time to walk him through it.

_Sam, Dean, I love you like my own. I do. But sometimes you two are the whiniest, most self-absorbed sons of bitches I ever met. I'm selfish? _Me?_ I do everything for you. Everything! You need some lore scrounged up –? You need your asses pulled out of the fire – you need someone to bitch to about each other, you call me and I come through every damn time! And what do I get for it? Jack! With a side of squat!_

Bobby's scratchy voice, rising in pitch with his frustration, came back to him. It'd hit him then, how much they'd come to rely on Bobby – for everything. He hadn't been able to figure out how that'd happened, not really, but he'd thought it'd started to get worse around the time she'd disappeared and told the angel she wasn't coming back till Heaven and Hell had stopped hunting for them.

Bobby'd been on the clock, and somehow they'd forgotten about that.

_Do I sound like I'm done? Now look, I know you've got issues. God knows, I know. But I got a news flash for you. You ain't the centre of the universe. Now, it may have slipped your mind, but Crowley owns my soul, and the meter is running, and I will be damned if I am gonna sit around and be damned! So how about you two sack up and help me for once?_

They had. Hell, he'd even gotten on a fucking plane and made the flight to Edinburgh, sweating and drinking the whole damned way. But on the flight back, relieved that the job was done, and half-comatose with in-flight booze, he'd come uncomfortably to the realisation he was going to have to keep his crap to himself. Deal with it on his own, 'cause there'd been no one else around, no one he could trust to let it out with.

He slid a glance to the woman beside him and let out a soft exhale, wondering how different things would've been if she'd been around.

As if she'd read the thought, she said, "Dean, I'm sorry –"

He smiled, feeling it crack a little. "Don't, okay?" Pulling in a deep breath, he added, "Nothing worked out the way it should've, but that – that's how it played out."

He saw her catch her lip between her teeth, and looked away, pushing back against the seat, his breath stopping for a moment in his throat. It was too easy now to imagine how it could've been, how he might've felt. Pushing that aside, he tried to remember where the conversation had started.

"Anyway, I, uh, took out the whole nest, and got away, and the Alpha figured I had some payback due."

* * *

Ellie drove on autopilot, her thoughts chaotic and her emotions caught somewhere in her chest, aching and chilling her.

She couldn't have come back. Bobby had told her that Dean was trying to make it work out with Lisa and Ben, trying to be what they wanted, and needed, and find what he'd wanted and needed at the same time, and when she'd heard that, she'd run again, all the way to another continent and into a relationship she'd known was nothing more than an attempt on her part to forget about him.

No matter which way she tried to look at it, he was right. The way things had played out hadn't left either of them with choices, just worse and worse options. She couldn't shake the feeling that it hadn't been by chance.

"It didn't feel normal," Dean said, breaking into her thoughts, his voice low. "Didn't feel like _me_."

"What?"

"In Dearborn. When I was talking to Jo."

Once again, Ellie felt that irritating, prickling sense that she'd missed something, something of real importance in what he'd already told her. She turned to look at him.

"What do you mean?"

He huffed out an exhale, shifting restlessly in the seat. "I don't know … but … I thought I hit rock bottom when I was thinking about letting Michael use me, you know? Thought that was it. I couldn't see another way out of that and it felt like giving up everything."

Another thing she hadn't been around for, Ellie thought, trying to repress a flash of bitterness about that. She'd thought she was doing the right thing, keeping clear of them.

He hunched down a bit further in the seat, staring through the windshield, his expression tense. "I'd already given up on you," he admitted. "Didn't seem like there was anything else to do but make sure Lucifer couldn't fuck up what he hadn't already."

He'd told her the bare bones of that time, on the road to Lincoln. Told her how he'd packed up his stuff. Gone to say goodbye to Lisa and Ben. Sam'd figured where he'd be and Cas had put him out and he'd woken up in Bobby's panic room. Bobby'd been … uncomplimentary … when she'd asked him about it later on. House full of flight risks, he'd told her, Dean and Adam.

"That was bad, I mean, no question … but … it was a lot worse when I was sitting in that barn, listening to Jo and Sam."

He rubbed his hand over his face, and she saw him turn toward her from the corner of her eye.

"I don't know why," he said, his voice rising a little. "When Sam killed it, I thought all that – that darkness – despair – whatever the fuck it was – had gone. I mean, at first, I was – just – you know, glad it was over, and that held it off for a while, but even a month later, it still felt like what I was doing, what me and Sam were doing, was pointless."

"Maybe you had a good reason to want it all over," Ellie said, thinking of the last two years. "Maybe you've had enough."

* * *

"No!" he said, his voice thrumming with tension as he sat straighter and leaned toward her. "No, that's not it – and it wasn't, even then. I–I–I wasn't thinking about _anything_, when Jo was there, like it wasn't supposed to be something I–"

He stopped as his memories of the room, the spirit, the crushing strength of that absence of emotion, returned strongly. He'd been empty and dulled down to the point where the things that had been coming out of his mouth hadn't even made sense.

"I told Jo I should've sent her home to her mom," he blurted out, the moment filled with a sense of helpless bewilderment, even in recall. "Ellie, Jo died with Ellen. They were both there. A-a-and there were other things …"

He'd been in the circle and Jo had broken the window, pulling energy in the form of heat from the glass until it'd cracked. He'd watched the salt ring scattering, the circle breaking with the wind that'd blown in through the pane, and he hadn't moved an inch. Abruptly, he realised he hadn't been waiting for justice, but for–

"I was waiting for punishment," he said, the words coming out in barely a whisper.

"What?" Ellie asked, her head snapping around to look at him. "For what? Your guilt? Dean, you didn't do anything wrong!"

He nodded, hardly registering what she was saying, hearing the god's voice in his memories.

_People want to be judged. They really do. When your heart's heavy, let me tell you, real punishment's a mercy._

_Real punishment_. Not repentance, not contrition, not atonement. But a life for a life. His eyes narrowed slightly as he tried to remember how Warren had seemed. He'd done his time. He should have felt that he'd paid. Thirty years. But he'd gone out of the circle, gone to the spirits who'd killed him.

Just like him. Standing there, watching Jo take his lighter, walk over to the gas stove and turn it on, the strong, sweetish smell of gas cut by the night air coming through the broken window, but falling, heavier than air, gathering on the floor, building up. He hadn't thought of Ellie. Or of Sam or Bobby. Just the weight on him. And being free of it.

Finally.

Not once had it crossed his mind that he didn't want to die, that he didn't deserve to die.

And that was wrong. There was nothing in his life that he'd ever wanted more than what he had right now, he thought, his gaze refocussing on the woman beside him. She'd given him what he'd wanted and had hidden, even from himself, and he'd looked too long, been through too much to ever let that go voluntarily.

He'd paid for his mistakes, paid for them a million times. He'd owned them and given up almost everything of himself trying to make what he'd done right. He _had_ been punishing himself, for fucking years after he'd been raised from Hell, telling himself he'd deserved to have nothing after what he'd done down there, but that'd been a lie as well. A lie to keep him from wanting something he'd thought he'd never get. More lies to make the losses seem reasonable, acceptable.

_Do you want to be punished? Do you need to feel like you're paying for what you did?_

He blinked at that memory. That'd been in Nebraska and he hadn't known then, hadn't been sure that if what he'd felt – was still feeling – about himself, about what had been done to him and what he'd done, held a need for punishment … but, he suddenly considered … if he had … then Osiris hadn't been weighing his guilt. He'd been weighing that need. And accommodating it. What'd the fucker said to Sam?

_I don't decide anything, Sam. I don't decide Dean's guilt. I just weigh the guilt that's already there. This is solely about how Dean _feels_, way down deep._

That'd been a lie, he thought suddenly. It hadn't been about guilt, not guilt for what he'd done but the need to somehow suffer for it. Pay for it. He hadn't thought much about how it'd felt like he shouldn't be living, shouldn't've been allowed to live, for a long time, but maybe he'd never really gotten through it the right way. When she'd gone, it'd been too hard to look at himself. To look inside. Her going had felt like a punishment itself. Punishment for daring to want something – someone – for himself. And then there hadn't been any time.

He blinked as Ellie flicked on the indicator and pulled the car over to the shoulder, her face drawn.

"What –?"

"Drive," she said, putting the car in Park and opening the driver's door.

He slid across behind the wheel, waiting as she walked around the front of the wagon and got in the passenger side. "What're you doing?"

"I want to call Katherine," she said, pulling out her cell and hitting a speed dial number. "About the powers Osiris had."


	8. Chapter 8 More Than A Feather

**Chapter 8 More Than a Feather**

* * *

_**I-20N, Alabama**_

Putting the car in drive, Dean pulled out, chewing on the corner of his lip as he realised she'd followed his thoughts without a problem. "You think that dick could make people feel so bad they wanted to die?"

Glancing at him as she listened to the phone ringing, Ellie said, "I think you're still carrying some kind of need for restitution, Dean. I – Katherine? I need some information – no, no – yeah – well, all the lore you have on Osiris – yeah."

Dean stared at the road. He hadn't told Sam or Bobby the way he'd felt. Had been pretty confident their reactions would have been anger and not getting it and wondering if he was heading for a breakdown of some kind. He'd told her because … because he'd had to, he realised slowly. He couldn't – didn't want to – pretend everything was just fine, just okey-dokey, with her.

_I'm talking about whatever you're not telling me about. Look, Dean, it's fine. You can unload. That's kind of what I'm here for._

He felt a laugh strangle in his throat as he remembered Sam telling him that after the witch case. He'd stared at his little brother across the roof of the car, feeling so goddamned sick and tired of it all, wishing Sam would leave him the hell alone, unable to tell him a goddamned thing. It wasn't just that he'd lied to him about his friend. It wasn't just that he'd been thrown around a room and assaulted with bees. It wasn't that he was bone tired and messed up so bad in his head and wanting to drink himself into oblivion so he could just fucking well rest.

It'd been Sam. Standing there, saying it to him as if every single time he'd ever let something out to his little brother, something that'd been poisoning him, something he'd been scared to hell about and had to get out or have it rip his sleep to shreds, hadn't come back at some point and been used against him, smashing whatever trust he'd built up in the interim, breaking him again and again.

"No, I don't need all of it – just the, um, high points."

He drove without needing to think about it, only half-listening to the conversation beside him. It just hadn't fucking well _occurred_ to him that she wouldn't see straight past whatever it'd been and be able to tell him exactly why it'd felt so different. It sure as hell hadn't occurred to him to be careful in how he'd explained it, he thought, or to think that she was vulnerable to what he said, or what he did, even though he'd seen her doubts about them, he'd seen her fear of getting hurt. By him. _It doesn't matter_, she'd said to him. _It's too late_. He'd seen it then. He'd _felt_ it then, how raw and armourless they were with each other. How much it meant and how fragile it seemed, with all that'd happened and everything that kept on happening.

_Do you trust me?_ They'd both asked that question and the answer had been the same.

_Mostly_.

He knew he trusted her with everything he was, but he didn't trust that someday she wouldn't leave. Because she _had_ left. Had left and hadn't come back and he hadn't been able to believe how bad that'd felt. And … because … _everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed?_ It hadn't been real but then again it'd been the truth and it was something he couldn't bury deep enough.

"He what? No, go back – right. Where was that –?"

A glance to the side showed her leaning forward, her face intent. He thought she trusted him with everything but choosing something else. Because he'd always done that … always chosen something else instead of what he'd wanted … always put himself in second place.

Looking down at the speedometer, he eased his foot off the accelerator, dropping the car back to a little over the limit. Had that lack of belief in each other made it worse when he'd faced the god of the dead, he wondered? Had some part of him not wanted to keep fighting? He didn't know.

"Right, so the effects were amplified until the sentence was passed? How amplified? And for how long?"

Keeping his gaze fixed on the road, he heard the restrained excitement in her voice. Would it make a difference to her? If he'd been influenced by the god's power, and it hadn't been his own choice?

They'd passed into Alabama a couple of hours ago, and he was feeling the effects of the last forty-eight hours. The bypass around Birmingham was coming up and he thought there was a good motel a bit further north. Food would help. A drip-feed of caffeine would probably get them into South Carolina. But he needed to stop. For a few hours, at least. Stop moving. Get it straight with Ellie. Sleep.

"Yeah, send it, please," Ellie said, still hunched up, her gaze fixed on the glove box. "No, still got that. Send it to the forum – uh huh – yeah, unless they've figured a way to hack the wireless towers – I'll get rid of this phone – yeah, I'm fine. I just need to relocate for a while – no – yeah, it's precautionary – no – out of Richmond completely – I will – no, I won't forget."

She leaned back, and he saw her eyes close, the small crease between her brows still there.

"Katherine? Thanks – yeah, I will. You too."

He heard the window being wound down, flicking a sideways glance at her as she threw the cell out without ending the call. It bounced several times on the concrete highway before a car behind them ran over it.

"What'd she say?" he asked when she'd wound the window back up.

"There's a lot about Osiris, and yeah, he could – and apparently did – ramp up the feelings of those he was judging until they were sentencing themselves," Ellie said, lifting her hand and rubbing at the small crease with her fingertips. "Katherine's sending what she found to a secure site. We can check it when we stop."

"So it wasn't me," he asked, feeling his heart do a double-beat at the idea. "Some kind of whammy?"

"She said it was a field effect, in whatever location he was in," Ellie told him. "It started out gradually, then would get stronger and stronger as he built his sacrifices."

"Sacrifices?"

She looked at him with a slightly wry smile. "You didn't think he was hanging around and meting out justice for the fun of it, did you?" she asked. "He got a load of power from every sentencing, enough to begin to change his surroundings, to build a blanketing field that would bring more people under his influence."

Dean felt his fingers close harder around the wheel, memory returning abruptly. He'd started to feel it when they'd gotten into the town, he thought. Not wanting to be there. Not wanting to do anything but drown himself in booze, old guilts and new ones seeping through the walls in his mind that'd been fine – mostly fine – up till then. He remembered the bar, talking to the blonde bartender, remembered his half-hearted attempts to pretend it wasn't his life. He'd asked her out, both of them knowing what they were talking about, and he hadn't even thought about it and for a second his knuckles stood out white under the skin as he tried to work out why that hadn't set off every internal alarm he had. Sliding a furtive look to his right, he wondered if Ellie would've brushed that off. Somehow, he doubted it.

He'd never consciously looked for relationships and his experiences of being in one weren't what anyone'd call extensive, but when he'd been in one – when he _was_ in one – he was monogamous without having to think about it. He didn't get the guys who fucked around. If it wasn't what he wanted, he got out. Or, he remembered, with a slightly sour smile, he was kicked out. If he was getting what he wanted, he didn't look around for anything else. What'd happened in Dearborn had shaken that belief in himself, mainly because he couldn't work out why he'd been trying so hard to be someone else.

"So … uh … does that, uh, change anything?" he asked, shoving those memories back down and clearing his throat when his voice seemed too high. "I mean, for you?"

"Of course it does," Ellie said, swivelling in the seat and drawing her knees up. "I –"

She stopped, and he heard her take a deep breath.

"As long as I've known you, you never gave up," she started again. "Not once. When you said … when you said you wanted to – it was – a shock. Something I didn't know about you. Something I'd never considered."

Shaking her head, she continued, "I was scared of what that meant. And because I don't deal with being scared all that well, I got angry instead."

He slid a sideways look at her. "It was a damned good reason –"

She cut him off, "No, it really wasn't."

The smile she gave him wasn't much more than an upturning of the corners of her mouth and a wash of uneasiness spread through him. He couldn't have this conversation while he was driving.

"Uh," he said, swallowing and catching sight of the road signs as they flashed by. "I thought we could stop, after we get past Birmingham."

Nodding, Ellie turned away. "Good idea."

* * *

_**Riverside, Alabama**_

They picked up burgers, fries and sodas on the way into the town, the smells of the food permeating the car and making Dean's stomach rumble continuously as he drove along the river to the motel he remembered.

Ellie went into the office and got the room, and his pulse sped up again when she tossed the single room key on the seat between them, directing him to the rear of the place. He'd never been a big fan of conversations that probed and dug at his feelings, but as he stopped the car in front of the nondescript faded yellow door of the room, he admitted to himself that the low-grade tension that'd filled him since she'd walked out of the bar wasn't going away without having this one.

Opening the door, he let out a soft exhale as he saw the queen-sized bed taking up the centre of the room, his gaze flicking disinterestedly around the rest. In addition to the bed, the room held the usual sofa, small table and chairs, squeezed into the corners, and a counter with a sink and a small fridge. He was unsurprised to see it had a motif, based around maritime activities possible on the river that ran through the town.

He dropped his bag on the floor by the bed, and pulled out a canister of salt, turning for the windows. The rustle of paper bags and the renewed flood of scents of grilled meat and deep-fried potatoes hurried him along.

While they ate, Ellie opened the files Katherine had sent, skimming through them, reading out the punchlines. Dean finished one burger and picked up his second, listening to her, thinking of the way the other vics had died. Guilted to death. By a god who was pissed that most of those who might once have been his followers, supplying him with juice, were now too busy with Facebook or making a buck to worry about mouldy old gods.

"How'd he control Jo?" he asked, picking up his soda.

"That's fuzzier," Ellie said. "Most of this is speculation, anecdotal but still … it looks like he could rummage around in people's minds, looking for the things that made them feel guilty. He didn't seem to care that people frequently feel guilty for things they shouldn't. He is the god of death, in Egyptian mythology. I guess he could find spirits when he needed them."

"That mean Jo wanted to hang around?" he frowned at the thought. He'd hoped … he'd hoped she'd taken the express elevator up.

Ellie frowned as well. "I don't know. You didn't see her soul, did you? You saw a ghost?"

"Yeah." And, he thought uneasily, the other vics had seen ghosts too. Of cars and dogs and murdered people.

"Sam said they died in an explosion," Ellie prompted. "In Carthage."

"Yeah."

"We could try to reach her, if you wanted to?"

He felt a shiver slither down his spine. He wasn't sure he wanted to do that.

"The actual events didn't matter to him either," Ellie continued, her gaze returning to the laptop's screen. "One account says he twisted the memories of the victims to increase the guilt."

Dean blinked. He remembered telling Jo he should've sent her home to her mother, with the memory of her sitting alone in the hardware store burning in his mind. Jo hadn't been alone. And her spirit hadn't argued that point, he remembered. Had just ignored it.

"If this god was, uh, doing a B&amp;E on my brain," he said, the burger in his hand forgotten. "Maybe Jo was just a – you know – an illusion? Not real."

It'd seemed like Jo, but at the same time, not quite, he thought. Like the Jo he remembered? An amalgamation of his memories, not the real thing?

Ellie was looking at him, the crease back between her brows. "There's nothing in here about that," she said. "I don't know how'd find out for sure."

Dean nodded. Cas might've been able to find out, if Jo was in Heaven … or not. But that option had gone with the angel's death. He looked down at his food and lifted the burger slowly to his mouth again.

"Why did you tell me how you'd felt?" Ellie asked. She was wadding up the wrappings and pushing them back into the paper sacks and he finished chewing his mouthful, swallowing and washing it down with a mouthful of soda before he answered.

"I thought you'd … you know, figure out why it'd had that impact," he said with an apologetic shrug. Looking up, he shook his head at her expression. "I didn't stop to think what it sounded like – it felt like it was mostly over, you know? I just – I thought you'd have a-a theory."

"You thought I'd –" Ellie repeated, her brows rising. "Is that how you see me? Like nothing's going to affect me?"

"Well, uh, no," he said quickly, his gaze dropping back to the burger to hide the fact that he did, kind of, see her like that. Sometimes. "Uh, but … most of the time, you – uh – it doesn't. I mean, you don't react much – to – uh – stuff like that."

She got up from the table, picking up the takeout sacks and dropping them in the trash can under the sink.

"Well, I did this time, didn't I?" she asked, turning around to look at him as she leaned against the counter. "Overreacted, went off in a snit, got blindsided –"

"Ellie –"

"What's going on?" she cut him off. "When I got to Carrs Mill, you were sitting there waiting to be found by something, Dean – it's not the hangover from Osiris anymore, is it?"

"No," he said, putting the burger back on its wrappings and pushing it aside. "I don't know."

That was almost the truth. What he did know was that ever since he'd rolled out from under the car at Bobby's place, looking up to see her there, like a fucking dream – or mirage – or a waking fantasy, he'd been on some kind of a rollercoaster, up and down and round and round, and he couldn't figure a way to get off. When she was around, he felt like himself. His old self, he amended. It was like he could do anything, could see himself the way he once had, feel that old certainty in what he was doing and why. But when she left, that all gradually disappeared and all the crap that'd happened in the last two years would come back, crushing him under a weight of doubt, not knowing who to trust, not even knowing why the hell he was still trying. And he admitted unwillingly, in those times he sometimes wished he lived some other life. Was some other person.

"Some of it's – it's – all the total crap that – I mean, Cas and Sam and – and – some of it, I don't know," he said in a rush, rubbing both hands over his face and getting up, that restless lack of certainty hitting him again, driving him across the room. "Half the fucking time, I don't know what I'm doing."

He stopped pacing. "We used to save people, you know? It used to be clear. The last few months … I left a kid without his mother; we didn't even kill the damned witches, in fact one of them saved us … we're so far off the fucking grid, we can't even see it from here … I thought – you know, when we met up with Colette and – that was the first time in a long time it even felt like I had a life –"

"You want to quit?" she cut him off sharply.

"Because that worked so good the last time I tried?" he retorted, brows drawing together.

"That wasn't your choice then," Ellie pointed out. "This time it would be, you'd have more realistic expectations –"

"And what? I'm supposed to leave Sam – and Bobby – and you, hunting on your own?" he asked, his voice rising. "Just walk away?"

"Yeah, that's what you do – if you don't want this life," she said. "You find a town you like the look of, get a job, be someone else."

He stared at her, his heart thumping hard at her choice of words.

"If that's what you want," she added, her voice softening. "Make up your mind what you're doing, Dean. You can't keep going like this and trying is only going to get you killed."

"Are you tryin' to cut me loose?"

"No," Ellie said, looking away, her expression guarded. "I just don't want to hear that you're dead because you didn't want to be who you are."

"I'm not –"

"Yeah, you are," she cut him off. "And I don't know why."

For a moment, he wanted to argue with her, tell her she didn't know what she was talking about, that nothing'd changed, he was still fighting, still here. It would've been a lie, something to cover up how much goddamned truth there was in what she'd said and he knew it, but he didn't have any answers.

He sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at the floor, feeling the fleeting burst of anger drain out of him.

"Maybe I don't know who I am anymore."

"Maybe you don't want to know it, anymore?" Ellie asked, her voice dropping as she crossed the room and sat down beside him. "Am I wrong? Do you still think you should've died? That your father shouldn't have made that deal?"

_When your heart's heavy, let me tell you, real punishment's a mercy._

He hadn't let himself think about that for a long time, not since before he'd gone to Hell. He wasn't sure if that was a still a part of how he saw himself.

"We feel guilt for the things we could've done differently, if we'd been stronger or known more, or thought about it longer; not for the things we couldn't have changed no matter what," Ellie continued. "How much could you have done differently, if you had a chance to do it all again?"

Not much, he allowed unwillingly. Not going to the faith healer … maybe. If he'd died back then, Sam would've been alone, vulnerable with the visions that came … but the first Seal wouldn't have been broken. And maybe Sam could've done things differently. The second time, living hadn't been his choice. Tessa's kiss had brought it all back, and he knew he would've gone with her, left the battlefield, and left his brother and father to keep fighting without him. But it hadn't happened that way.

He hadn't been the one who'd dragged Sam back into the life, although for a long time he thought he'd had. But they'd found out it'd been Brady, killing Jessica and igniting the rage Sam had carried all his life. He hadn't killed Ellen and Jo … their deaths had weighed heavily on him because he'd asked them for help, but Ellie'd been right about that too. They'd made their own choices about what that meant and they'd known the risks. He'd died to get Sam's soul back and he'd do that again, he knew, the killing automaton who'd ridden shotgun for half a year hadn't been his brother, just a shell, just something he couldn't love and couldn't trust. He hadn't lied to Sam about the kitsune to hurt his brother; he'd just made a bad call, not thinking Sam was rational enough to talk to him about it.

_I want to stop losing people we love. I want you to go to school; I want Dean to have a home. I want … I want Mary alive. It's just … I just want this to be over._

In his head, he could still hear his father saying that. Over and over, sometimes. For the first time, he understood the depths of the desolation that had driven John Winchester to say it out loud, to his sons. The fight had gone on too long and the wins were never enough, not to make up for the people they'd lost. He wanted those things too. Wanted his brother to be safe and alive. Wanted to have a home and a family. Wanted his life to be different. Wanted it all to be over.

It was a dream. He couldn't go back and change anything. Couldn't undo what'd been done, not even the things he'd done. Especially not the things he'd done.

He turned his head, looking at the woman beside him. If he'd died when he was supposed to, he'd never have known her, he thought. Never even known what it felt like, to love someone deeply enough to change the way he saw himself. No one else had shown him the feelings she had.

"I don't want to die," he said, surprising himself as the words came out without any kind of warning that's what he'd been thinking.

"That's not enough," Ellie said. "Do you want to live?"

He thought of walking down the pitch-black driveway knowing that, in the house he'd been heading for, she could have already been dead – or turned – another loss in a long, long line. He hadn't faltered, hadn't told himself lies about it, had kept his reactions buried and under his control, but the memories of letting them out, once it was all over, were close and strong.

_Was it worth living like this_, he wondered, feeling tension creeping up between his shoulder blades and into his neck? Worth feeling stripped and raw and defenceless every single time he knew someone he cared about – someone he loved – was in danger, because of him?

"You think that god only jacked up what was already there, don't you?" he asked her.

For a moment, Ellie didn't say anything, then she nodded. "Yeah," she said. "I think the last few years have wrung you out, and you haven't really looked at it, just tried to keep going."

He couldn't disagree. He'd _had_ to keep going because Cas'd let the worst monsters in creation out of their box and had died, and that meant it was up to them to hunt them down and figure out a way to undo the angel's mistake. He'd had to keep going because Sam's wall had broken and he was seeing fucking Lucifer and his little brother needed him.

_I think you should just go on without me._

But apparently, that wasn't the case anymore, he thought, a little bleakly.

He'd kept going because whenever she turned up and he saw himself in her eyes, somehow hope rose from the ashes and he could see a point to it all again. But the point kept disappearing when she went and now he couldn't find it all and everything he'd thought or believed had been fucked up and screwed over by some Egyptian god who should've been dead and forgotten for the last thousand years.

* * *

Ellie watched the expressions passing over Dean's face, reading his confusion and frustration in every twitch. She ached to help him with this, to lead him out of that confusion of loyalty, habit and his lifetime of taking responsibility even when it wasn't his to take. Setting her teeth into her lip, she stayed quiet. This was something he had to find for himself. It wouldn't have the same result – the right result – if he was shown the way through.

At the back of her mind, she was all too acutely aware that he might not find that way for himself. That he might choose to keep living for others, to hold onto his misguided belief that he didn't deserve to have anything of his own. If he did, what was between them, still so fragile and easily broken, would be gone and there was nothing she could do about it.

It'd taken her a long time to understand the effects the past had on the present and the future. History couldn't be ignored or pretended away. She knew too that she still hadn't dealt with the things that drove her, the deepest things that she couldn't look at because her memories were incomplete. She was aware of them, aware that – like her recent reaction to what he'd told her – some of the things she felt, or did, seemed irrational, the reasons for them buried in the past with her parents. She thought the awareness alone kept her from worrying at those unformed anxieties, like a dog with a bone, and let her move past them, to some extent, anyway.

"I figured," Dean said, hesitantly, and she moved slightly closer to him. "I figured if I could just keep Dad and Sam safe, it would be okay," he continued, sucking in a breath as he flicked a sideways glance at her. "It wasn't."

The tension seemed to bleed out of him a little as she pressed her shoulder to his, his voice gaining strength.

"In my head, it was … was like a deal, you know?" he said. "I kept telling myself that if I let everything I wanted go, that would be a payment for keeping everyone else okay."

He shook his head, tipping it back as he drew in a breath, the sound harsh in the quiet room. "That started, hell, a long time ago. I didn't give much of a rat's about school, but I wasn't that bad at it. But I kept telling myself that Sammy had a shot, to be what he wanted, to get out, so long as I could keep up my end, and stay with Dad. Help him get what he needed."

She felt his chest rise and fall, the big muscles of his shoulders bunch and relax.

"It was like the only thing I could do." He held his breath for a long moment, then let it out slowly.

"It, uh, it seemed like it made me being around worthwhile, you know?"

He ducked his head, twisting around to look at her before she could say anything.

"I know, that's pretty fucking pathetic," he said, a tight, humourless grin stretching his mouth, not coming close to his eyes, which were dark, and she thought, so damnably haunted. "– and, that – that's, uh, it's not how it is now."

Except, she thought with a pang, it was. In some respects, maybe the most important ones, that was exactly how it was now and it was what he couldn't deal with, couldn't look at it or acknowledge.

_He thinks he's worthless! Like the only good that'd come out of his being alive is to hand himself over for his brother!_ Bobby's voice, higher in pitch than she'd ever heard it, desperately angry, resounded in her memory. She'd been looking for the brothers, a day after getting the incantation bowl from Harvard, and had missed them, spending the evening listening to Bobby's disbelieving rant. Sam'd told her more than a year later that Dean had changed, even before she'd found an answer for them. Had suddenly begun to fight for his life.

"No," she agreed, putting her arms around him, the lie tasting like ash in her mouth. "That's not how it is now."

She felt his exhale, gusting into her hair, then his mouth, brushing against her neck as he turned toward her, his arms enclosing her, tightening as he leaned closer. Under her fingers, she felt him tense, all at once; heard the sharp rasp of his indrawn breath, then relax just as abruptly. She wondered if he knew that they were both lying, accepting the lie because neither could go any further. Time was what Dean needed and time was what he never got.

"I wasn't trying to check out," he muttered suddenly, his breath hot against her skin.

"I know."

* * *

Breathing out.

Breathing in.

Dean closed his eyes, no longer holding back, letting the sharp peaks shake him through, floating on the backwash as fire and heat and pressure slowly faded away, in rills and trembles, leaving a soft ache of comfort, a depthless peace and contentment he'd never found with anyone else. He didn't know what the difference was, and he was tired of trying to figure it out. Tired of trying to figure anything out.

Copper-bright hair spilled over the pillow, and he buried his face in it, trying to keep most of his weight on one arm, feeling her pulling him closer.

"When do you want to go?" he asked, not wanting to ask that at all.

"Tomorrow," Ellie said on an outward sigh. "Can you sleep?"

"For about a hundred years," he replied, easing himself to the side of her, his cheek resting against the smooth slope of her breast and his arm relaxing over her abdomen. The tensions of the last twenty-four hours were gone, the mental and emotional contortions, every worry and every thought had been dissolved and washed away.

Listening to her breathe, he had a vivid flash of seeing her at the door of his room, back in PA. At first, he hadn't been able to shake off the dragging weight and apathy that'd been dogging him since he'd left Sam at the lake. Then they'd talked. And she'd made him laugh. And it'd been gone. He wanted to tell her that. Tell her he needed that. Needed her to stay. Needed her to be around so he could remember what he was doing. He couldn't make those words come out. He wasn't sure if it was because she didn't seem to need him, not in the same way … or if he couldn't find that last piece of trust, even in her.

* * *

_**Next morning.**_

The diner was quiet, the clink of china and the occasional conversation rising for a few moments then subsiding to a low drone in the background. Sunshine spilled through the broad plate-glass windows, lighting up the room and creating prisms of colour from the hanging crystals above the tables, and Ellie smiled as she watched Dean single-mindedly consume the last of the breakfast special on his plate.

"What?" he asked a second later, tucking the food into one cheek as he looked up. "C'mon, I'm starving."

"I didn't say anything," she protested, pushing her cleaned plate to one side and picking up her coffee.

They'd woken early, just as dawn was lighting the eastern sky, after sleeping the night through. Even allowing for the lack of sleep and the tensions of the past two days, it had to be a new record for both of them, she thought, almost fourteen hours straight.

"You looked it," he retorted, swallowing the bacon and washing it down with the last of his coffee.

"You're paranoid."

"Yeah, an' that'd be 'cause everyone's trying to kill me," he told her.

"Can I get you folks a refill?"

He jumped a little as the waitress appeared behind him, leaning past to pick up the empty plates, with a big smile pasted onto her face, as if she hadn't just heard him say what he'd just said.

"Uh, yeah," he said, pushing the empty cup across the table. "Thanks."

"Yes, please," Ellie added, the corners of her mouth tucking in as she watched his transparent discomfort.

"No problem, be right back."

Dean watched her walk out of hearing range and turned back.

"So, what's the plan?"

Shrugging, Ellie said, "Get back to Richmond, pack up everything I've got, move it somewhere else. What are you doing about Sam?"

"What can I do?" he asked, brows drawing together. "He made it clear he wanted to go solo. 'Sides, he could be anywhere by now."

Ellie sighed and leaned back as she saw the waitress approaching. "You could find him if you wanted to."

"But I don't," he said, taking his coffee when it was poured and looking at her over the rim of the cup. "Maybe it's a good idea to do our own thing for awhile."

Ellie made a noncommittal noise in her throat and picked up her cup.

"You can't wait to get rid of me?" he asked her, his expression disparaging.

She gave him a dry look. "Yeah, that'd be it."

He grinned at her, leaning back in the seat. "We could work together for a while," he said, one brow rising.

She felt a jolt at the suggestion, not sure if he was kidding. Or reaching. When she'd woken, she'd been in his arms and they'd taken their time, making love with a slow sensuality that was still reverberating through her nerves. The dark despair in him had gone completely, so far as she'd been able to tell, his energy back in force, along with the self confidence she hadn't seen since they'd hit New Orleans. They'd worked together a few times, but almost always with others. She'd had the impression he preferred to work alone if Sam wasn't around, but he hadn't been doing so well that way lately.

"Sure," she said, trying to match the lightness of his tone. "I could use some muscle to move my stuff."

"Hey, what I'm here for," he said. "Let's go.

Getting to her feet and pulling out her purse, she walked ahead of him to the register and paid for the meal, and they stepped out into the mild morning, turning for the river and the motel.

"How did you and Sam disable the levi long enough to get it to Bobby?" she asked, frowning as she realised she couldn't remember what he'd told her about it.

"Seriously? You're gonna start this now?" he asked, slowing and looking at her.

She made a face at him, and shrugged. "Call it dedication."

He let out a gusty exhale and waved a hand in a vague gesture. "That was Don, the, uh, witch. Warlock. Whatever. He turned up at our room, looking for his wife's curse coins and zapped the sonofabitch into unconsciousness."

"A spell?" Ellie asked. "He used a spell?"

"Some kind, I guess," Dean said, ducking his head. "Took the levi out for three days."

"What did it look like?"

"Like a spell," he said, turning to look down at her. "Crackling light, smell of burning ozone –"

"So electrical in nature?" Ellie persisted, trying to envisage it.

"I guess." Dean shrugged. "This guy was a few hundred years old, Ellie, and he had plenty of juice. I didn't have time to ask for the specifics."

They turned up the concrete path that led to the motel and stopped, both seeing the tiny tell at the same time.

The back of their room faced the river, the wall holding a broad picture window. When they'd left, the curtains had been open. Now they were closed.

Dean faded back toward a spindly copse of trees dividing the river walk from the motel's lot, Ellie moving backwards with him.

"How the hell did they find us?" he whispered, as they half-ran, doubled-over to take cover behind a parked car.

"Colette." Ellie leaned back against the grill of the car and pulled out her phone, dialling fast. Against her ear, the phone began to ring and she waited, her face screwing up as a message advised her the line was out of order.

"Disconnect."

"Fuck!"

"We have to get out of here," she said, curling her hand around his arm. "Now."

"Everything I got is in that fucking room," he protested, duckwalking down the side of the car to get a better view of the room door. Ellie crouched behind him, looking past his shoulder when he stopped.

"You can replace it," she told him. "We need to get another car, and we need to go."

The room door opened and two men stepped out, one going to the station wagon parked in front, the other looking around.

"C'mon, Dean, they made us," Ellie insisted. She had her backpack, laptop and journals and notes all in it. She knew he had his gun, the Colt in the inside pocket of his coat. The rest of his stuff was as good as gone.

She backed up to the end of the car and into the thin strip of woods, staying low and hearing him behind her. It was a couple of blocks to the centre of town, staying close to the river. She thought they could cross over, grab a car on the other side and head west for a couple of hours, then turn north. They'd need something with tinted windows.

* * *

Crossing the park, they kept to the back streets until they reached the bridge, walking over it fast. A small mall on the other side had a parking lot full of possibilities.

"That one," Dean said, looking around. Ellie followed his gaze and nodded. It was an ordinary older model dark blue Ford sedan, and it wouldn't've drawn a second glance from anyone.

Leaning against the rear of the car, she watched the lot as he popped the lock, and walked around to the other side when he got in and leaned across the seats to unlock the passenger side door.

Leaning under the steering column, Dean broke the cover and separated the wires, cutting and stripping two of them and getting a spark and a cough from the starter motor as he touched one to the other. The engine caught and he twisted the ends together, looking across at her.

"What now?"

"North," Ellie said, looking at the phone she'd bought an hour ago. "Every minor road until we get to the 431. We can change cars there."

"This town doesn't even have a red light camera," he grumbled, reversing out of the lot and heading north along the narrow road. "How the hell they pick us up so fast?"

"I don't know," Ellie said, that question weighing on her as well. "Even if they got the registration of the car and a description of it, there's no way they could've just picked us out in the middle of the country."

Thinking of Frank, Dean swallowed uneasily. "Satellite?"

"Tasking a satellite with finding one nondescript car in the middle of millions isn't easy," Ellie said, shaking her head. "They might've figured we'd head north, but that wasn't a sure thing. And why're they hunting you so hard?"

"Yeah, I got no clue."

* * *

_**Six hours later, Staunton, West Virginia**_

Dean twisted the top off a beer, dropping the cap in the trash and turning around as Ellie walked out of the motel's bathroom. He felt himself stir as he let his gaze move slowly down what he could see of her, the small white motel towel not concealing that much.

"Leave any hot water?" he asked.

"Enough," she replied, going to the small table and sitting down. He watched her pick up a comb and detangle her hair.

In the distance, there was a rumble of thunder, and the lights flickered, brightening again after a moment. They both looked at the salt lines that guarded every entrance and vent to the room.

"Just a storm," Dean said, walking to the window and twitching back the curtain. To the south-west, a dark line of cloud flashed with sheet lightning and another deep rumble oscillated the glass and rattled the frame.

"I haven't seen a demon in months," Ellie remarked, opening her laptop and logging in.

"Small favours, right?" He let the curtain fall and walked back to the table, putting his beer down and turning one of the chairs around. Sitting down, he rested one arm along the back of the chair, grabbing the beer and focussing on her. It was something he never got tired of, he thought, tipping the bottle up and swallowing a mouthful. "You want to change cars here?"

She nodded, her eyes on the screen. "Yeah, it's big enough to change cars, plates, hopefully sneak out."

Looking up at him over the laptop, she added, "And we need to split up here."

"No," he said without thought, an instant gut reaction. "No way."

"It'll be safer, for both of us," Ellie told him, keeping her gaze on the laptop's screen. "I'm not even going to the apartment, I'll head into DC and make arrangements to get it all packed up and moved from there."

"Then it doesn't matter if we're together," he argued.

"They know what you look like, and you don't know them," she pointed out, glancing up at him.

"They know what you look like too now."

"Not as well as they know you," she disagreed, gesturing vaguely. "They _were_ you, and your face is too well-known after what happened anyway. I can move around a lot more easily on my own."

"And you've already forgotten what happened last time you were on your own," he said, scowling inwardly at the poor example, but staring belligerently at her.

"That was a one-off, and you know it."

"Maybe," he conceded reluctantly. "Ellie, I can't –"

He cut himself off, looking down at the beer in his hand. Every instinct was screaming at him that it was the wrong move, that they needed to stay together, but he wasn't entirely sure that it was strictly business, that it wasn't because of the way he felt and that uncertainty gagged him effectively.

"It's a bad idea," he finished, looking back at her. "Trust me on this."

"It's risky, yeah," she allowed, her face shadowed as the overhead light flickered again. "But it's less of a risk than going in together."

"Yeah, well, you're gunna have to convince me better than that," he said, crossing his arms over the back of the chair.

"For whatever reason, they're damned gung-ho about finding you," Ellie countered, her tone matter of fact. "You need to get off the grid for a while and keep a low profile."

The laptop beeped and her gaze dropped back to the screen. Dean swigged moodily at his beer, trying to find a good argument against what she'd said. It was, unfortunately, true and there was nothing he could think of that could change that.

"Colette and Michel are alright," Ellie said, reading the screen. "But their place was trashed and burned."

"Thorough, aren't they?" he commented, glad for a momentary diversion from the argument he wasn't sure he could win – or even start. "How'd they find them?

"I think they probably scanned the city for my truck," she said. "There are two or three dedicated birds for the southern borders and the Caribbean, and if the levis could get access to the film coverage, it's possible they could get a fix on it. The time it took was about right."

He huffed a disbelieving snort. "So, what? Big Brother's watching everything?" he asked, thinking of Frank's paranoia.

Ellie shrugged. "It's not like on TV, where anyone can get into any database," she said. "There're millions of disconnected databases out there, not one consistent, all-connected-together network, but yeah, if you know what you're looking for, and you can get into the private firm networks, or the state and national level databases, you can probably pick up a lot of surveillance without a lot of effort."

"How the hell do we stay out of sight then?" he demanded. There were red light cameras, traffic flow cameras, subway security, store security, hospital security, even most lifts had fucking cameras tucked into one corner or another. He and Sam used them all the time. Although, he considered, sucking in a deeper breath as he thought about it, the levis didn't have kind of manpower at the moment to walk into places personally and eyeball the footage.

"Even a slight tint on car windows will obscure the driver," Ellie said, typing as she talked. "Baseball cap works for street cameras, throwing enough of a shadow to hide your face. Not looking around helps with store and airport and hospital cameras."

She looked up at him. "I think they got our hotel from the security cameras. Most of the hotels are using the same security firm down there and that levi was already in the city. Maybe that was just bad luck, picking us up if he was looking for something else."

"Something else like what?" Dean asked, frowning.

"I don't know," Ellie said, looking back at the screen. "We'd need our own feeds to try and keep track of what they're doing. But whatever it is, it's not going to be low-key. They were used to being at the top of the food chain. That's what they're aiming for."

A crash of thunder made him jump involuntarily, the storm announcing its closeness by taking out the power. In the reflected light of the laptop's screen he saw Ellie frown as she reached for her bag. She pulled out a couple of candles and he dug in his coat pocket for his lighter.

"How'd they find us at Riverside?"

"I don't know," Ellie said, glancing back at the computer screen. "Michel said he didn't have any paperwork for the station wagon. Did you ever work a case there?"

"No, stopped over there a couple of times when I was on my own," he said. "After Sam went to college. That's it."

He dropped into the chair opposite her, watching her. "If they all know what one of them knows, maybe they got that from my memories? After we were Xeroxed?"

"Maybe," she said, looking past him, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she seemed to consider that. "Yeah. Maybe."

He saw her refocus, her gaze returning to him and took a breath. "Ellie, you said this … uh…" He cleared his throat. "Us, I mean … was gonna be hard to work out."

Her attention sharpened on him. "Yeah."

"Is this – uh, I mean – for you, is it – you know … too hard?" he asked, looking away as the last words came out too fast. It wasn't something he wanted to ask. It was too likely she'd say yes.

"You tryin' to cut me loose?" she asked, and he looked up, unsure if she was kidding or not.

"No," he said, swallowing as he saw her expression. "No. But, this … isn't …"

He trailed off, not sure of what he was trying to say. It wasn't like he'd thought it'd be? He winced internally. He had no idea of what to expect, he realised, his gaze dropping again at her silence. With Cassie, it'd been more sex than talk and when he'd tried to make it more, tried to open up, she'd laughed disbelievingly, then yelled at him, then taken off. With Lisa, nothing had gone deep, the time they'd spent together had been surface only and he'd known after a few months it would never be more than surface, could never be more than that, would never reach down to where it was just him, to where he lived.

He heard her soft exhale and risked a glance from under his brows. She wasn't looking at him, her gaze on the table in front of her.

"I – I'd get it," he added, clearing his throat again as he heard his voice rise. "If it was, I mean. I'd understand if you didn't – you know. No one needs this crap in their lives –"

"Dean," she said, looking up at him. "Stop talking."

Closing his mouth, he saw her take a deeper breath, the sight making his palms start to sweat.

"Yeah, this is hard," Ellie said, pushing the laptop to one side and leaning forward, elbows on the table. "This isn't an ordinary life. If we make a bad decision, it's not putting up with a lemon of a car, or having to repaint the living room. People die. People we love. Or we have to do things we never wanted to do, never even imagined we'd have to do."

He couldn't argue with that, he thought, wiping his hands on the sides of his jeans. He also couldn't figure where she was going with this.

"And yeah, I think it could get harder, maybe a lot harder," she continued, her eyes on his, her face expressionless. "I don't know that it's ever going to be, you know, easy … or like other people seem to have it."

He still had no idea of what she was saying, but he was aware he was tensing up, trying to brace for the worst. Against the base of his throat, his pulse was thumping, making it difficult to breathe. He realised she could see the reaction, pounding there in the hollow, when her gaze dipped briefly and lifted again.

"No, I don't want to throw in the towel," she added, her expression softening slightly. "No, I don't want to give up on something I – I never believed in, never thought I'd find or want so much."

She looked away, shrugging. "It's hard because it means so damned much. It's hard because of who we are and what we've done and what still has to be done. It's hard …" she hesitated, her gaze dropping again for a moment, then rising to meet his.

"I love you," she said, and in the candlelight he saw a sudden glitter in her eyes. "I didn't know what that meant. Not really. I'm not sure if I do now, but I know I don't want to let it go just because it's hard. You'll have to come up with something a lot worse to get rid of me."

It took a few seconds for what she'd said to sink in. He didn't have time to figure out what to say back before she continued.

"And … I don't think it'd feel like this, you know? If it was easy and didn't demand so much?"

He waited for a couple of seconds, with the feeling she wanted to say something else, but the laptop gave a loud beep and she straightened up in the chair, letting out a frustrated breath as she closed the lid. She looked at it for a long moment, then ran a hand through her hair, pulling back over her shoulders. When she looked back at him, he saw the gleam in her eyes had gone, her expression open and a little wry.

"You bring a deck of cards this time?" she asked, sending another slightly disgusted look at the computer.

"Uh, no … must've left them in my – my, uh, other car."

He was reeling from what she'd said, and the way she'd looked as she'd said it. He couldn't think of what to say in return, couldn't think of anything to say at all. She'd answered his question, turned from the way out he'd offered … and that, he thought, a little dazedly, was a good thing. She didn't seem to expect an answer, he realised belatedly, looking at her expression.

"Guess we could call it a night?" he suggested.

"Doesn't look like we've got much choice," she said, getting to her feet, and letting the towel drop.

He sucked in his breath as she walked around the table toward him. It would wait for morning, he decided, not even sure what he was referring to, the tangle of feeling and thought gone.

Stopping beside his chair, Ellie held out her hand and he got to his feet, taking it; pulse accelerating as a frisson of desire raced through his blood, coruscated along his nerve endings. It was so not fair, he mumbled to himself, the way she could arouse him with a look, or a smile … some combination of intent and feeling and the input of his senses he didn't know how to figure out and couldn't resist.

He watched her lie down on the bed, hastily stripping off and leaving his clothes in a tangle on the floor, stretching out next to her, feeling that familiar deep tremble as her fingers slid over his chest. It didn't seem to matter how or where or why, when she touched him, that tremble was always there, more intimate than a kiss, bringing him to life in a way nothing else could. He wondered briefly if he'd be as aroused by anyone else now, as intensely, as needfully, every inch of his skin feeling on fire and aching for her touch.

He didn't have time to come to a conclusion before thought disappeared as she moved closer and her lips ghosted over his. He was lost in sensation, in rolling waves of touch and taste and sight and sound, in a tightening spiral of need and the deeper spears of emotions he could only ever let himself feel here, skin to skin and no lies possible amidst arcing desire and the shuddering depths of pleasure, emotions that had never gone through him so deeply as he felt them now.

He'd loved every woman he'd ever been with. Loved them for the short time they were in his arms, loved the way they looked and smelled and tasted, loved the way he could draw responses from them, their pupils dilating, mouths opening and breath rasping in their throats, their bodies trembling under his mouth, his hands, when he was inside of them and nothing else existed except the moment, that slow, sweet build to a release that'd kept him sane. It didn't matter if he knew their names or not. Didn't matter, really, if he never saw them again or thought of them again. For the duration of each encounter, he was focussed on them, on their needs, and nothing made him harder than fulfilling their desires, feeling them come around him.

He knew – and he had the idea he'd always known – that they'd been able to feel that love. He thought it might've been why they gave themselves to him. It was why he'd felt guilty about them, leaving before light seeped in around the curtains, no conversation, no note, just the smell of sex on their sheets and in their memories. In return, they'd all loved him back, while he touched and caressed them, holding him close, telling him to stay. He'd needed to feel that. Needed the unconditional acceptance. Needed the comfort, even when he was waiting to slip out while they were sleeping, his tensions gone, the long-time compulsion to get back to his family taking over.

Not once, in all those years, had it been like this.

Maybe sex wasn't supposed to be a big part of love. He didn't know about that. For him, it was. It was the place where nothing but the truth was possible. It was the heartbeat of the way he felt, a passion that wasn't matched by any other experience he'd known, a connection more intimate than he'd ever imagined. He thought that maybe it was the same way for Ellie, in every wire-tight arch of her body, and the way she clung to him, trying to be closer still, the way she wouldn't let him go. When he looked into her eyes, when they were locked together, all he could see was a complete vulnerability. He knew that vulnerability. He had no defences with her at all.

The shockwaves of her orgasm rippled along him and he groaned against the swelling feeling building in his groin, trying to hold on longer, for both the exponential increase in pleasure and to push her deeper, intensifying every single sensation for both of them. Ellie arched up under him and he looked down into her face and lost it then, his arm tightening around her as release took them both by storm and thunder rattled the windows and shook the building.

He'd had no idea of what he'd been looking for, he thought later, the aftershocks trembling through his body, her lips against his temple, for most of his life. Had only known he'd never found it. It'd taken him a long time to recognise. Someone he could trust. Someone who knew almost everything about him. Someone who saw the deepest part of him, the part where he lived and breathed.

_Did he want to _live_?_ Yeah, he murmured, just a breath against her neck. He did.

* * *

_**Eight hours later.**_

He knew, even before he'd opened his eyes, that she'd gone. There was an emptiness in the room, just the sound of his breathing and nothing else.

_Sonofabitch_.

Sitting up, Dean looked around, the bright numerals of the clock advising him it was ten minutes past eight a.m. There wasn't even a hint of her scent left in the air, though it would still be on the sheets and the pillow.

He felt rested. His sleep'd been, so far as he'd been able to remember, without dreams, just deep and black and restorative. He didn't dream much when she was with him. It might've been due to what they did before sleeping, he thought, with a grin that turned into a jaw-breaking yawn. But he thought it was because when she was there, he stopped worrying about every goddamned thing and let himself just be.

On the table, there was a sheet of paper, and he got to his feet, grabbing his jeans and pulling them on.

_Didn't want to wake you. For now, if anything important comes up I'll leave a message on this forum for you. InsectLoversDailyForum. I've set up the account there. User ID lepidopterist109. Password 327-4barrel._

_I'll be careful and as fast as I can._

_Ellie_

A reluctant smile tugged at one side of his mouth as he saw the password.

She'd left the coffee pot filled and ready to start, and he folded the sheet up and put it in his wallet as he walked over to the counter, flicking on the switch and staring out the window. The Ford was still there. He'd trade up when he went to find some breakfast.

He should've known she'd drop the argument and just take off, he thought, taking a cup and waiting for the coffee. His stomach knotted a little as he tried to weigh up how much more likely she was to run into something on her own.

_Get over yourself_, he told himself, scowling at the slow drips of coffee as they hit the bottom of the jug. She'd been doing this on her own for a lot of years, she probably _was_ going to be safer going in alone.

The last few days were still a blur of events and conversations, emotions released but not yet looked at. In some ways, he felt like a lot had been cleared away, forced out, and through whatever alchemical process his brain used, dealt with just by doing that. In others, it felt like a helluva lot more had been stirred up, ready and waiting to pounce on him when he wasn't ready for it. And while it'd vanished completely when she'd been with him, he knew that sooner or later, that grey fog was going to be back, filling him up with doubt and clouding his ability to think again.

_Maybe I don't know who I am anymore_, he'd said to her. Right now, that didn't feel true. Right now, he felt more like he knew who he was than he had for the last couple of months. Right now, he felt more or less okay.

The pot finally stopped making noises and he poured himself a cup, carrying it back to the small table and sitting down.

Maybe that'd stay. Probably not. He'd asked her to work with him, and she'd left. He couldn't blame her for not taking him seriously, he thought, knuckling his eyes as he looked absently around the room. He hadn't made it clear he'd been serious, not wanting to lay himself open, not wanting to get a rejection, even one phrased gently. And, he considered, downing a mouthful of coffee, she was right about one thing. He was having a hard time remembering why he did what he did. Sooner or later, if he didn't do something about that, he'd make a mistake. Do something the wrong way. End up dead or getting someone else killed.

They had an open line of communication now, one that couldn't be tracked, he hoped. It was something.

Finishing his coffee, he got up and dumped the cup in the sink, turning off the coffee pot and going to the bed. He picked up his tee shirt and pulled it on.

* * *

_**One hour later.**_

The burger was bland but filling, and Dean chewed thoughtfully as he walked slowly along the row of parked cars along the strip mall's front, a cheap baseball cap shadowing his face.

The car stood out among the others, low and wide and lean, the panels a motley mix of flat primer colours, but the promise of her sending an electric spurt of excitement down to his toes.

_Nice._

He looked around as he sidled up to the driver's door, pulling the cap a little lower on his brow and drawing the slim jim from the inside pocket of his coat. He hadn't stolen so many cars since he'd been a teenager, he thought, easing the flat, flexible strip of metal down between the window and doorframe. The lock popped open.

With a last, casual look around the lot, he slid into the driver's seat of the Challenger, face screwing up in disgust as he saw the pile of takeout and trash that covered the passenger seat.

"Geez, have some pride," he muttered, sweeping it all off the seat and onto the floor.

He'd clean her out when he hit the next town, he decided, feeling for the ignition wires below the column. The dj on the radio blared out at him as the engine rumbled into life, and he reached out to turn the damned thing off, freezing as he heard the facetious report.

Lilydale. Definitely his kind of thing, he decided, pulling out of the lot and heading east.

* * *

**End**

_Does it feel that your life's become a catastrophe?  
Oh, it has to be, for you to grow, boy.  
When you look through the years and see what you could  
have been … oh, what you might've been,  
if you had had more time._

_~Supertramp_


End file.
